


Resolve

by Pyreo



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Anime Fight Scenes, F/M, Fluff and Angst, No Legally-Required Breaks, Non-Anime Actual Fight Scenes, Pacifist Route, Possible Character Death, Reader Is Not Frisk, Reader Replaces Frisk, Reader-Insert, Sans Needs A Hug, Sans has trust issues, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2018-05-08 18:59:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 52,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5509427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyreo/pseuds/Pyreo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not only does a human fall into the Underground, the last human they need - but this human can see things. Things they can't begin to understand, things that took Sans years of hard, regrettable work to become aware of. </p><p>On the other hand, they're flirting with him.</p><p>Sans doesn't like this one bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Conversation

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written serious fanfiction in many a year and who would've thought it'd be Sans that drags me back into it. Informative note - reader will be referred to as female. 
> 
> For whatever is about to occur, I am sorry.

You fell into the snow, laughing. A snowball whipped the back of your hair and smacked the ground near your head. Papyrus really didn’t hold back on his throws.

Somewhere behind you, you heard a grunt and a telltale ”nyeh!” and you roll aside just in time for another snowball to splash in front of you, showering you in cold powder. You panted another laugh, not feeling any chill after how worn out you’d gotten from this fight. Steeling yourself, you managed to scramble to your feet and ran your bare hands into the snow to create a new projectile.

It was already a few days since you’d arrived in Snowdin and you’d settled into it much like the perpetual snowfall. The shock of falling into the mountain seemed a world away now, and the welcoming fairy-lights and warm windows of the charming town actually made you feel at home. It was dim, of course, being underground. There was little difference between night and day. Your stripy sweatshirt was no substitute for the coat you hadn’t brought for this weather. But, for now, these things hardly bothered you. You could go where you wanted, do what you wanted, and you’d already made a friend.

Your snowball splatted Papyrus on the back, leaving slush dripping from his armour. He retaliated with unnerving focus, and you couldn’t dodge the end of his onslaught. A heavy wet smack thudded into your chest.

“Hey, hey, easy,” you called out. The force of it stung a little. “I don’t think I’d survive another twenty of those.”

More like nineteen, precisely.

“DO YOU WANT ME TO RELENT, HUMAN?” the skeleton yelled back, shaping another snowball and flexing with it. “ARE YOU SUBMITTING TO THE MIGHT OF THE GREAT PAPYRUS?”

“Sure, yeah,” you grinned, hurrying across your battlefield towards him while swiping compacted snow from your clothes. “I give, Papyrus. You win.”

Papyrus bounced with glee. “HUMAN, YOU SHOULD BE HONOURED TO HAVE FOUGHT SO VALIANTLY AGAINST AN ADVERSARY SUCH AS MYSELF. AND, INCIDENTALLY, THANK YOU FOR THE PRACTICE. UNDYNE SAYS SHE’S TOO BUSY TO TRAIN ME RIGHT NOW, AND UNSURPRISINGLY MY BROTHER HAS NEVER JOINED IN A SNOWBALL FIGHT.”

“Shocker,” you raised your eyebrows.

“SANS IS GOOD AT MANY THINGS,” Papyrus went on, “BUT NONE OF THEM INVOLVE RUNNING. OR THROWING. OR SNOW.”

“Hey, now. He fries a good snow.”

Papyrus just narrowed his eyes. Being remarkably more enthusiastic, Papyrus was the one you’d spent the majority of your time with in Snowdin. You’d met the brothers together on your route to town through the forest, and it was Sans who’d introduced himself first, but now you were here, you found he preferred to keep to himself. He was hard to find, in fact. You’d never even seen him go in or out of the big house he and Papyrus shared.

You sniffed and wrapped your arms around yourself. You had no pockets in this thing for your hands, and no gloves. Now that you weren’t running around, you were shivering.

“HUMAN! YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID YOU WERE COLD,” Papyrus was suddenly and busily in front of you, patting and inspecting you for some reason. “I WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO TELL. BECAUSE I HAVE NO SKIN. YOUR CLOTHES ARE ALL WET, AS WELL.” He sighed as though addressing an unruly teenager. “YOU’LL HAVE TO COME BACK TO MY HOUSE WITH ME AND WARM UP. IT IS MY FAULT, AFTER ALL.”

You felt frozen damp finally reaching your socks and hurriedly agreed.

Crunching your way through the twinkling, wooden hut town was so pleasant it made you forget the damp and the cold. You puffed out a breath cloud and smiled back at the townsfolk, taking two strides in the snow for every one of Papyrus’s. A mouse person wrapped up in a huge scarf, a bunny person… walking a smaller bunny? It all made you feel like a kid again. You passed by Grillby’s and heard warm laughter and the clink of glasses from inside.

“HUMAN,” said Papyrus, “THERE IS SOMETHING ELSE I’VE BEEN MEANING TO ASK YOU. MAKING YOU MY NEW FRIEND INSTEAD OF TURNING YOU IN WAS A STROKE OF GENIUS ON MY PART. I’M GREATLY ENJOYING OUR FRIENDSHIP,” he put a lot of emphasis on the word, peering down at you.

“Me too,” you beamed. “What’s this about, Papyrus? Did I do something wrong?”

You had to hurry to keep up with Papyrus now, as he seemed to be pacing faster out of nervousness. “I DON’T THINK SO! HUMAN, I SEE YOU PASSING OUR HOUSE SO FREQUENTLY—WELL, I MEAN, HANGING OUT WITH YOU IS EXTREMELY FUN! BUT—UM, GIVEN THAT YOU’RE HANGING OUT WITH AN EXTREMELY DASHING AND ACCOMPLISHED SKELETON SUCH AS MYSELF— AND YOU’RE ALWAYS WEARING ALL THE CLOTHES, AND EVERYTHING—“

You frowned up at him in confusion.

“I DON’T WANT YOU TO GET THE WRONG IDEA ABOUT WHAT GOOD FRIENDS WE ARE!”

“Oh, Papyrus!” you laughed, but tried to quash it in case it seemed rude. “I’m, uh…!”

Papyrus stopped at his front door, throwing his head back and sighing to the heavens. “PLEASE DON’T SAY YOU’RE HEARTBROKEN.”

“No no no no, it’s fine!” you patted him firmly on the back of his armour. “You’re not the one I’m interested in, I swear. Being friends with you is all I want.”

“EXCELLENT!” The skeleton snapped back to his full, impressive height. His voice had no less intensity than normal, but still seemed slightly relieved. His grin had intensified, and it was infectious. He ushered you into his cabin home, making sure to dust himself off as he crossed the threshold.

The living room was cosy, natural wood and nicely decorated, but best of all, deliciously warm. You let out a sigh as heat brought your stiff body back to life.

“Thank you,” it came out almost as a moan. You wiggled out of your shoes and inspected your socks.

“YES, YES, NOW GET THAT SWEATER OFF SO WE CAN DRY IT. I UNDERSTAND BEING WET IS UNCOMFORTABLE FOR NON-SKELETONS,” he huffed. “HONESTLY, YOU’D THINK PARENTS WOULD KNOW HOW SNOW WORKS BY NOW.”

You stopped in the middle of fluffing your soggy sweatshirt. “Um, parents? I dressed myself. I’m here on my own.”

“YOU ARE?”

“Well, jeez, I’m not a kid.”

“YOU AREN’T?”

“No?”

“BUT YOUR SWEATER IS STRIPED!”

“That doesn’t make me not 26!” Clearly some cultural indicator was amiss here. You grabbed the bottom of the confusing garment and brought it up over your head. “See? How about now?”

“not bad.”

You blinked, turning to the stairs on the opposite side of the room. The shorter, stockier skeleton brother had managed to appear during the two seconds you were in the dark with a sweater over your head.

“sorry. am i interrupting something?”

You could’ve sworn his grin looked a teeny bit more shit-eating than you remembered it. For some reason it felt warmer in just your shirt than it had with the extra layer on. The surprise of seeing him overrode your brain for a moment, but soon enough you remembered why you were standing there, gripping a stripy traitor you never wanted to wear again and which you handed over to Papyrus. Sans shuffled past the two of you into the kitchen.

“I DON’T KNOW HOW MY BROTHER MANAGES TO SOUND KIND OF RUDE WHEN HE APOLOGISES.”

“He has… quite a sense of timing,” you said, watching Papyrus lie the sweater out to dry.

The skeleton snorted. “YOU COULD SAY. HUMAN, WHERE _ARE_ YOU STAYING THEN? IF YOU’RE VISITING SNOWDIN ON YOUR OWN?”

“I’ve been over at the inn. It’s okay, although the walls are a bit thin.” You thought about the collection of gold coins in your pocket, lightening every day. All of it won from teenagers and guard dogs you’d befriended out in the forest. You’d managed to afford the last week or so, but.... “Once I ran out of money for it, I just figured I’d… move on.”

Papyrus looked scandalised. “I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE PAYING TO STAY HERE! WHY, AS YOUR FRIEND, AND ALSO AS SOMEONE WHO WOULD RATHER YOU _NOT_ LEAVE, I MUST INSIST THAT YOU CONSIDER… MAKING THIS YOUR HOME INSTEAD!”

He looked incredibly proud of himself.

The offer caught you off guard. Truthfully, you’d been in denial about the lack of money forcing you to leave before you were ready. You didn’t know how Sans would feel about this. You didn’t know how you’d feel, sharing a house with Sans.

“All right,” you replied on instinct while your brain continued fussing over the details. “I’d love that, you’ve been too kind, Papyrus.”

“THERE’S NO SUCH THING,” he said, and began stepping back and forth across the room, tapping his chin. “NOW, I CAN GET OUT THE EXTRA BLANKETS, AND YOU’LL HAVE TO SLEEP ON THE COUCH. WHICH IS FINE, I THINK, I ALWAYS ENJOY MY TIME USING IT. I CAN MAKE EXTRA SPAGHETTI FOR YOU TONIGHT! OH, AND YOU CAN—“

While Papyrus had been planning, your attention shifted momentarily to the kitchen door. Was Sans still in there? Had he heard what you’d talked about? Did he have an opinion on it? He must have heard Papyrus—

When you looked back at the tall skeleton, he’d trailed off and was watching you with some intensity.

“...What?”

“EARLIER JUST NOW, YOU SAID…” Papyrus frowned at you. “YOU SAID I WASN’T THE ONE YOU WERE INTERESTED IN. AS IN, ROMANTICALLY. AS IN, YOU DON’T WANT TO DATE ME. BUT THEN…”

You felt your heart sink.

“WHO _IS_ IT? WHO HAVE YOU BEEN LOITERING OUTSIDE OUR HOME WAITING FOR? HUMAN, YOU MUST TELL ME! AS YOUR FRIEND, I AM OBLIGATED TO GIVE YOU DATING ADVICE! I MUST KNOW! WHO—“

Your gaze meandered again to the kitchen door.

Papyrus looked from you, to the kitchen. Then back to you. Then to the kitchen. Then he pointed at you and gasped.

You shook your head.

Papyrus pointed between you and the doorway repeatedly.

You waved your hands and mouthed ‘no no no no no no’.

It was too late. Papyrus had his gloves clapped over his mouth in shock.

You took a calming breath. Deep down, you were overjoyed about getting to live with them, even if Papyrus seemed to have just turned into the world’s least subtle wingman. You could handle this. If he would just keep his cool, you’d have a real place to live; you could stay here, comfortable and secure. The idea filled you with determination.


	2. Breakfast And A Movie

You had flour in your hair and you’d definitely used twice the number of strange mechanical implements that you were probably supposed to. You’d also abandoned four test pancakes so far, all of them discarded in a batter shame pile. The current one, however, looked like a winner. You took the pan from the stovetop and headed for the table in the skeletons’ living room.

You’d set it up as nicely as you were able, Sans’ pet glittery rock in the middle like a centrepiece. With one good pancake to your name, you were on a roll by now, and shook the pancake in its pan just like you’d seen professional people fry things. And why not – you flicked the pan in your grasp, tossing the pancake over in the air and back into the pan.

You let out a shocked laugh, posing in your apron. You were amazing. You were practically a domestic _goddess_.

“hey. uh, did we _hire_ you?”

Your bravado was nowhere to be found as you cleared your throat and tipped the pancake onto the nearest plate. Sans’ grin seemed genuinely amused this morning as he came downstairs and approached the table.

“what’s all this?”

“I found enough ingredients lying around for some breakfast. I hope that’s okay.”

“okay?” Sans slid into a chair. “this is fantastic. i mean, this is an actual, bona-fide breakfast food for once.”

Your eyes snapped to him and he had that other grin again, the one that dared you to call him out on a joke. You shrugged with feigned ignorance.

“Let me do a few more and we can get this party started. Actually, I didn’t expect you to be the first one up.” You left him at the table and set the stove to heat your pan back up.

“heh. excuse me, i take my jobs very seriously.” He was probably watching you from the table. “uhh, where am i stationed this morning. hotland? i think it’s hotland.”

You turned from the kitchen door to make sure he couldn’t watch your expression. _I can see why they posted you to a place called Hotland_. He really, really shouldn’t see you blushing into a frying pan. _Don’t worry about being late, because from where I’m standing, it’s Hotland right here_. Your brain kept throwing these out and you _know_ he didn’t mean it that way and you were not going to say any of them. You were NOT.

Honestly, you were aware that you were a human and him a skeleton. It’s not like you somehow didn’t realise that. It’s just that, some time after you first met him, part of your thought process ceased to care. He didn’t remind you of anything but himself, and part of you felt like you’d known him even before meeting him, and Papyrus too. His brother would’ve been the tall, handsome one of the brothers, if you had to label it. Sans was a jokester, chill and unassuming, and a full head shorter than you. Even so, you know how to read your own inclinations. You liked Sans’ cute little stature. You liked his sense of humour. You liked Sans.

People around here - monsters – obviously didn’t give much thought to physical specifics or barriers. They _weren’t_ physical. They had such a broad spectrum of appearances. Maybe that was rubbing off on you.

By now you’d made another six pancakes, and that was all the batter could provide. Your thoughts could hash out all these details later. Holding up the stacked plate, you were greeted out of the doorway by an explosive yell.

“HUMAN! _YOU_ MADE BREAKFAST?!”

“she sure did.”

You doled the portions out evenly, and Sans started covering his in a flood of syrup.

“y’know… y’don’t have to do this kinda thing. i mean, you’re a guest. not a personal chef.”

“I just wanted to. I’m grateful to you guys, and I’m not a charity case. I wanna help you out if I can.”

“IF YOUR SENSE OF HONOUR REALLY DEMANDS IT…” said Papyrus, inspecting his food with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. “PANCAKES FOR _BREAKFAST_? HMM.”

“i guess they do things differently in the human world,” Sans chuckled.

“I could run errands, while I’m here? I can try to keep things tidy, if you wanted me to.”

“CAN YOU MAKE SPAGHETTI?”

“No. Actually I have zero redeeming qualities.”

Sans nearly choked, slamming his fork down with a huge belly-laugh. It was completely different from his usual short chuckles, and had him coughing too, steadying himself with his hand on his knee.

“That tickled your funny bone?” you tried not to giggle just saying it.

It was Papyrus’s glare across the table that got you in real laughter, bubbling up as you tried to push it down for his sake, but it was no use. You sank in your chair next to the similarly incapacitated Sans. You tried shovelling a wad of pancake into your mouth to play it off, but forgetting what you were eating, you got a shock when the food melted on your tongue and warmed your body with a wave of sugar.

Sans was tracking your expression. “so, what’s human food like?”

“It’s, uhh… solid. It stays solid. Your body has to digest it. It takes… longer. This stuff’s a lot more efficient.”

“really,” Sans’ voice was genuinely at attention, and you noticed the lights in his eye sockets dart over your body. “see, monster food is a lot more intuitive. it's usually made with magic. and when it’s made, it gets infused with a certain sense of feeling,” he actually winks at you. “so, i can tell… you were having fun doing this. and uh…”

Sans ate another scoop from his fork, which like yours, disappeared once it was in his mouth. You tensed up inadvertently, remembering the train of thought you had in front of the stove.

“kind of contemplative. but eager, definitely, and that tang of willpower…” he held up his hand in an ‘okay’ sign. “nice. you’re pretty _curious_ , huh?”

You bit your tongue, brain deadlocked, as Papyrus leaned across the table in the most elaborate of stage whispers.

“HE’S JUST MESSING WITH YOU.”

You breathed out in relief, knowing your hefty sense of denial had done you proud. “Humans can’t use magic like that!”

“nah,” Sans admitted. “the rest is true, though.”

You took everything back to the kitchen to clean up, thinking, guiltily, of butterscotch-cinnamon pie that tasted like home. You heard the front door close, and Sans leaned in from the front room.

“thanks. nice of you to make breakfast.”

“Don’t mention it. And don’t be late for work!”

“heh, i won’t be. uh, you should really get yourself a coat, though. y'know where the shop is?”

“I’ve seen it, yeah.”

“take mine in the meantime,” you watched him shed his jacket and leave it on the back of a chair. He looked smaller without it bulking him up.

“Are you sure? Won’t you need it?”

“in hotland? also, I’m a skeleton. well, see ya.”

And that was that. You didn’t hear the front door close a second time.

That afternoon you went for a casual walk around town, snuggled deep into Sans’ enormous jacket. You kept your hands in the pockets too, for warmth. It was exceptionally cosy. You wondered if you resembled a taller version of him. Maybe people would recognise his clothes on you. Maybe they’d start rumours.

Wishful thinking?

You pushed open the door to the shop. A little bell chimed.

“Oh, hello!” the cheery rabbit woman at the counter waved. “You’re the newbie. Stayed over at my sister’s inn, didn’tcha?”

“Yeah. Oh, that was your sister next door? It’s a nice place.”

“Heh. She told me you checked out yesterday. Not staying long, huh?”

“Actually, I didn’t think I would be, but…” you really tried not to let inordinate pride seep into your voice, looking around at the wares and oddities behind her, “I’ve ended up staying with those skeleton brothers instead.”

The rabbit winked, glancing pointedly at your jacket. “I see.”

“Uhh, anyway, I’m just looking for a coat of my _own_ , if you have one.”

“Mmm… sorry, hun, we’re not much for good clothing stock right now. Ain’t a lot of demand in Snowdin, with most’ve us bein’ the fur type. I got a bandana somebody picked up, ‘n that’s about it.”

“Aww. That’s okay.” Were you slightly pleased? About having an excuse to wear Sans’ clothes around for the time being, really? Jeez.

“We’ve got a few snacks, that’s my specialty, if y’want. Made fresh every mornin’!”

“Uhh… okay. Can I get three cinnamon bunnies?”

“Absolutely. 75G, hun.”

You left with the crinkling bag of baked treats and the very last of your money gone. It seemed halfway appropriate. You were in the skeletons’ hands now, you might as well be broke and bring back a thank you gift.

Every day from then on was much the same. You explored the town, taking it all in slowly, and finding you learned your way around exceptionally fast due to the small size of the place. It was all lively, with people milling in the street, decking a Christmas tree (it had a different name, but it certainly was a Christmas tree), or waving to you as you passed. Sans let you keep his jacket indefinitely, or at least, never actually asked for it back. It was so cosy to be in, especially with the hood up and burrowing your nose into the fluffy collar.

Over time you realised that life wasn’t all that easy for people in Snowdin. They were content enough in manners, but they would talk quite frankly about their anxieties to do with their sense of entrapment. They couldn’t leave the underground, and in some way they all felt the pressure of their lack of freedom. After a little while there, so did you. At least you’d been outside on the surface only a week or so ago, but the monsters here had never known it in their lives. Some of them assumed you were from ‘the capital’ and asked if it truly was as overcrowded as they’d heard. You had to confess you didn’t know.

Like how snow seems magical at first but becomes a tiresome burden over time, you could see how the people in this perpetually icy town yearned for a change.

You did your best to help out in the skeleton household. You took to grocery runs easily and attempted to cook whenever possible, at least on the days when Papyrus didn’t get up earlier than you to make breakfast spaghetti (which tasted of far too many things at once, a truly riotous flavour). You’d never been particularly confident in your cooking skills, but you figured you were doing an okay job since Papyrus told you he’d never seen Sans out of Grillby’s for so long before.

There wasn’t much to be done, otherwise. Papyrus kept the house extremely neat, and forbade you from moving the single sock lying by the couch. (“SOMEONE NEEDS TO LEARN RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR OWN FOOTWEAR.”) His own room was spotless. Sans’ was always locked.

Most evenings the three of you ended up watching a movie or some low-brow tv shows. The sheer novelty of monster entertainment amused you more than it did them, but they seemed to enjoy your reactions. Your couch positions got progressively less restrained as time went on. You ended up either lying across Papyrus’s legs or straddling an armrest sometimes.

On one occasion, before the movie started, Papyrus pulled you aside.

“I HAVE A QUICK QUESTION, HUMAN,” he whispered as low as he could muster. “…WHAT DO YOU THINK OF MY BROTHER?”

“Oh, uh… well, he’s cute.”

 _Really?_ scolded your brain, arriving late to the conversation.

“HEH,” Papyrus was clearly pleased. “YOU SEE, I THINK A PROPER FRIEND WOULD BE GOOD FOR HIM. HE DOESN’T HAVE THE SAME ASPIRATIONS OF POPULARITY AS I. YOU MAY NOT KNOW THIS, BUT SANS IS ALWAYS SLACKING OFF FROM HIS JOB. I CAN NEVER CONVINCE HIM TO TAKE THINGS SERIOUSLY. AND HE COULD USE A COMPANION WHO ISN’T HIS BROTHER AND ISN’T A FAIRWEATHER BARFLY,” he glared to one side as he spoke.

You just nodded.

“ON THE OTHER HAND, IF YOU WANTED TO DO ANYTHING... AH… IF YOU WANTED TO _BE_ … WELL, YOU KNOW. I JUST WANTED YOU TO KNOW THAT SANS ISN’T ALWAYS,” Papyrus leaned on your shoulder while searching for words, “HE’S A LITTLE… UNMOTIVATED. IT CAN BE HARD TO GET HIM TO DO ANYTHING. YOU’VE SEEN THE SOCK. IT’S JUST AS HARD TO GET HIM TO STOP JOKING AROUND. AND IF YOU EVER DID DECIDE TO ASK HIM ON A… DATE… BE PREPARED FOR THAT.” For once, the skeleton wasn’t meeting your gaze. “I DO TRY MY BEST TO STOP HIM BEING LAZY, AND MY BEST IS VERY GOOD, BUT SANS IS JUST… _LIKE THIS_. OKAY?”

“Okay.”

The smile returned slightly to Papyrus’s eyes.

“And… if I did still want to date him, uhm… just wondering, what… how would you suggest…”

“JUST MENTION GRILLBY’S AND HE WON’T REFUSE,” he sighed, smirking. “YOU’RE NOT _SHY_ ABOUT _SANS_ ARE YOU?”

“Hmmmggg,” you turned away, probably bright red now. Maybe a skeleton wouldn’t understand the significance of blushing.

“OH, AND, ONE LAST THING,” Papyrus drew you back towards him by roughly razzing your shoulder. “MAKE SURE YOU’RE CERTAIN. BECAUSE IF YOU SUDDENLY CHANGE YOUR MIND AND HURT HIM…” he drew himself up to his full, impressive height, armour shining, intimidating and bulky, his tattered red cape flowing with the movement. “YOU _WILL_ HAVE TO ANSWER TO ME!”

He winked.

“guys, c’mon, the movie already started,” Sans’ voice drawled from the couch.

It turned out to be an action/sci-fi kind of movie, but not written by anyone who knew what they were talking about. By the two hour mark you had to stop bottling up your opinions.

“I’m sorry, but there’s no _way_ the alarm could go on for that long to give them enough time to get out. It was unstable thirty seconds ago! And what the hell is he doing firing a laser at the guy standing in front of a fuel tank??”

“I WANT TO KNOW WHY THOSE TWO DIDN’T JUST SIT DOWN AND DISCUSS THEIR PROBLEMS HALF-WAY THROUGH AND SAVE US ALL THE TROUBLE.”

“Exactly! Shut up, Sans,” you huffed at the skeleton beside you, who was chortling and kicking his feet that didn’t reach the floor.

“what, they don’t have bad movies on the surface?” he said with his attention still fixed on the screen. “it really must be as good as we all imagine it.”

You looked at him for a second, trying to gauge what Papyrus had said. Something about Sans looked so comfortable, you wanted to grab him into your lap and become, well, a lot more acquainted than you were right now. Find out what those bones felt like – all of them. Oh _no no no_ not that again. You needed your wits about you to do this, and you had to stop staring. Now or never.

“Uh, Sans,” you tried to even your voice out, like you’d only just thought of this, “I was just thinking, I’ve seen most of Snowdin now, but uhh… d’you… think you could show me Grillby’s sometime?”

“hm?” he took a moment before looking at you, and you were able to watch the words register on him as his smile faltered for the first time you’d ever seen, replaced by uncertain surprise. “oh. uh. yeah. sure. tomorrow night, maybe.”

You forced yourself not to say anything else out of nervousness. You tried not to act too relieved. You just sank backward, slowly, pressing your body into the cushions. You’d just asked him out. Kind of. Not specifically on a date, but—you did it. And Papyrus was _very obviously_ giving you a thumbs-up. You leaned away, to ignore him pointedly, grinning a bit too much.

A little way further into the movie, which honestly you weren’t following any more, Sans leaned back towards you so his shoulder touched yours. You both stayed like that, completely silent, until the credits. He got up first, and rather quickly wished you goodnight.

You did it. Having a sorta-date with a skeleton to look forward to filled you with determination.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know what bugs me? I've been writing "Papyrus's" and then "Sans'" for their possessive nouns. It doesn't make sense but they look weird if I try to unify them. Please don't judge.


	3. Raining Somewhere Else

That afternoon you took another walk around town. Partly to keep your head clear and grounded, partly to serve as a distraction from the idea of your ‘date’. You had integrated yourself well enough to get into short chats with the locals, and you could tell they saw you as less of an outsider. Maybe Sans’ big, familiar hoodie heaped over your frame helped with that.

It was always nice to walk past their decorated fir tree and see which monsters were checking the gifts underneath for their names. Presents seemed to be left anonymously, and the younger monsters were the most excited to find something appear with their own personal tag. You entertained the idea of leaving something there for the skeletons, but then again, you had no money, and no idea what they’d want that you could provide.

You hadn’t checked out the “Librarby” yet, and decided to correct that right away. It was a small cabin -at least, nowhere near as expansive as human libraries. You tapped the snow off your shoes at the entrance, nodded to the librarian, who you hadn’t seen before, and wandered around the shelves.

The opposite of ‘dusty old books’ were arrayed before you – small booklets, some of which resembled school projects, clustered the walls. Fishing one out at random, you read a little about monster history, and how the general population had moved from out the Ruins and through various harsh terrain while questing for a bigger settlement. There was a pang to your heart as you realised there might be documents that detailed the Ruins themselves and what caused everyone else to leave, but, fortunately or not, there were none.

A different sheaf of pages ran through a few cultural milestones for monsterkind and their rituals, including funerals. You realised that dusty ancient tomes would be the last thing you’d find here for good reasons. Monsters had to make all this themselves, with such limited resources, and without biological bodies such as yours, they weren’t going to get things dusty. Dust was, apparently, all they left after death.

You picked up a thicker book about the nature of monsters. They weren’t physical beings at all, but magical through and through. Magic infused them. Not only could they use it as they willed, but their strength and abilities fluctuated with their sense of self. Their very beings could change with the opinions, their emotions. Sans was right on the money about it – everything was more intuitive to a monster. And he was right about you, too. You were extremely curious.

Thinking about Sans had you looking up for a wall clock, and you realised it was already evening. You were out of the door after a hurried wave to the others at the desks and tables.

What time did Sans want to meet up for this? You trudged into the snow heavily, and turned right without thinking. How long after work did he mean? What if he’d forgotten? What if he hadn’t forgotten and you hadn’t even bothered to get ready for it? There was no way you could dress up with nothing to your name except the clothes on your back, and not even all of that was yours.

You crunched to a stop. A bear stooped out of the doorway in front of you, followed by a rabbit monster and the married dogs, all laughing amongst themselves. Once they’d passed, there standing on the snow behind them, illuminated by the friendly light from Grillby’s that splayed out on the snow, was Sans.

“hey.”

He gave you an easy smile and your face lit up in kind. Of course you were ready for this.

The real surprise was that you walked in the door and an uproar hit you just as squarely as the sudden warmth.

“SANS!!”

 _Everyone_ in the bar yelled it.

You took a minute to recover your senses as Sans trotted off, saying hi, pointing across the room, giving high-fives. Just about every dog sentry you’d ever bumped into was here. The other monsters were some of the weirder examples you’d run into around Snowdin, including one barstool which accommodated a large fish.

You were slightly struck by how legitimately popular Sans was, especially after Papyrus’s overt encouragement of your friendship with him. It made you feel a little more distant than you’d expected, at least until Sans was back at your side, gesturing you towards a free booth. You took off his overbearing jacket before scooting in, knowing the other patrons would take note.

“i like it here,” said Sans, patting his hands on the table. “i usually come around to avoid dinner at home.” You knew what he meant and offered an understanding grimace.

“It’s nice, yeah. It’s… cosy. And unassuming,” you said. _Just like you_ , you did not say, but Sans twitched his bright pupils onto you so quickly, you felt uncomfortably unsure whether he could somehow read minds.

Sans recommended you get fries or a burger, and when you indicated the latter, he asked how you liked yours done.

“Oh, uh. I guess medium’s fine.”

You got a blank stare from him. “no, no,” he grinned. “it’s more like… what _mood_ do you want the food in? that’s how it gets cooked. grillby’s amazing at it, lemme tell ya.”

“Oh, wow, okay,” you leaned forward over the table towards him. “So… what are my options?”

“usual stuff would be either ‘tender’ or ‘tough’,” he winked. “depending on how you’re feelin’.”

“Maybe you’d better order it. Can you get something… comfy?”

When Grillby came by the booth, it was probably a good thing for Sans to order, given that you were busy staring at the guy. It was hard not to. He had a perfectly human build, except that he was composed entirely of fire. Fire real enough that you could feel a little heat from it as he stood beside you and Sans directed him to bring you “one easy burg, and one for me, the usual”.

“What’s your usual?” you asked, bubbling with curiosity. Sans tilted his head a bit, not inclined to answer, so you decided to try something else. “Grillby’s pretty hot.”

Sans immediately frowned, stopping sharp with a glass halfway to his mouth.

“I mean, literally.”

“oh. yeah,” the skeleton muttered, giving you immediate cause to internally celebrate. That was a flash of jealousy if you’d ever seen one. He hadn’t even been smiling.

“Thanks for doing the ordering for me. Never thought I’d feel so out of my depth.”

“no prob. hey, how d’you feel, anyway? being around monsters all of a sudden?”

You shrugged. “It’s fine. It’s new, and I kinda like it. There’s so many things I don’t understand, and I like that too.”

Sans beamed. You could swear you saw more teeth than usual in that grin.

“can’t say many people think a human would enjoy themselves down here.”

“Why’s that?”

He drummed his fingers on the table, distracting you with the mosaic of bones in his hand. “some monsters don’t think humans are that great. i mean, papyrus and me, we’re fine with ‘em, obviously. but…” you followed his glance around at the other monsters in the bar. A couple of dogs were arm-wrestling. One monster, in a booth on the other side, looked to be an inscrutable mass of teeth. “none of them know you’re a human,” Sans’ voice was low and private. “they’ve never seen one, don’t know what they’d even be lookin’ for. if they knew, we wouldn’t be able to sit here.”

It was a vague implication, but you got what he meant. You wondered for a split second whether you were pushing your luck, whether you should really feel safe right here, surrounded by monsters. Then you remembered who you were with. Of course you were safe.

“i have a question,” Sans continued. “…what’s the surface like?”

He sat there, leaning onto his palm, perpetually lazy smile.

“What’s the surface like. Big question.”

“you’ve seen up there and down here, so…” He sank down more onto the table, still looking at you.

“Well, it’s pretty big. Countries are really huge. And cities are huge too. Millions of people. You could probably go out at 2am and find a place that serves ice cream.”

He chuckled softly. “well, what’s _your_ surface like?”

You paused. You thought about what you missed.

“When the sun goes down, it’s so bright and colourful. And after sunset, you can look up and you have this feeling like you’re not alone. Because the other stars are so far away, there must be all kinds of other people looking at them too. I guess maybe that’s what people in our world are looking for?”

You stopped, feeling embarrassedly over-idealistic about the details, until you saw Sans’ expression. His eyes were wide open, leaning on his arms. He looked enraptured.

“wow,” was all he said, and you felt like you hadn’t really heard his voice until that moment.

He wanted to know more about stars, about the sky, and especially about human astronauts once you happened to mention it. Not much was covered before your burgers arrived. You thanked Grillby and looked over the meal – which to anyone else would’ve appeared to be a regular old physical burger. Sans was watching you too as you prepared to try it.

You instantly understood what he’d meant about how it was cooked. The burger didn’t just taste great, it seemed to be infused with an essence that made you feel comfortable. Each bite was absorbed into you the moment it hit your palette, giving you energy immediately.

Sans motioned to you between mouthfuls. “good?”

“Good.”

The taste of the food matched how you felt about hanging around with Sans. His easygoing attitude just seemed to make you want to sit back and enjoy the moment. Which you did, in mutual silence, until you were nearly finished. Then you piped up again.

“Thanks for showing me around, y‘know, and answering stuff for me. I have a feeling I wouldn’t get far without you, Sans.”

“don’t sweat it. oh, i have another one.”

“Yeah?”

“your body,” he indicated with a gesture. “i mean. how's that work. food's not supposed to go straight into you, right.”

Straining to think back to school biology lessons, you mentioned a little about energy, and a bit more about breathing. You couldn’t actually remember if Sans breathed.

“And the blood carries air all around the body to keep it all alive. All powered by the heart, here,” you tapped the middle of your chest, “which pumps it by beating. Every second of every day for as long as we live.”

Sans’ eyes had been darting around you as you spoke, but his gazed hovered on your chest when you gestured. You raised your hand to your neck to demonstrate feeling your pulse. Sans leaned towards you, matching the motion, hand outstretched. Then you stopped and he flinched back instantly, thinking better of the idea.

“Oh no, no—“you held out your hand for his. “It’s fine.”

The skeleton’s fingers were warm to the touch; hard, of course, and so smooth. You wondered how you felt to him as you guided his hand up to your neck. Sans steadied himself on the table, expression nothing more than blank. Bone touched your skin. You pressed his hand flat.

You saw his pupils grow brighter as he noticed your heartbeat.

“oh my god,” he whispered, and after a couple of seconds, quickly removed his hand and sat down straight. He cleared his throat. “you feel _so_ weird.”

You both laughed.

“This’s great. I can’t even repay you for dinner, though.”

“hey, seriously, i got this,” Sans waved off your concern yet again. “’s nice having some _body_ to come with. y’know what we should do?”

You shook your head.

“condiment shots.”

“Condiment… shots.”

“yep.”

“Why not. I’m game.”

Sans ordered quite the selection, and seemed genuinely pleased at your reaction to the platter of little glasses willed with various colourful sauces.

“Okay, well, I’m not touching the mayonnaise.”

“mustard, then?”

You raised the tiny glass of mustard and considered it before looking back at him.

“just trust me.”

You found yourself actually knocking it back in one. It tasted just like mustard, sure, but not overpowering, not like the kind you were used to. More noticeable was the taste of courage, of enthusiasm. It was like taking a sip of zeal for life.

“Oh WOW.”

“heh! nice. okay now do vinegar.”

You slammed back the dark vinegar splash, finding it similar, but tasting also of clarity and a warm shock like lightning.

“Whoo!”

“y’know how much skill it takes to be a chef or bartender?” said Sans. “you don’t just cook food, like your kind. you have to feed your own emotions into it, ‘cause people’ll taste that too. gotta be seriously good at self control for the restaurant biz.”

“You’d better not be leaving all of these to do by myself!”

You picked up another vinegar and Sans took a glass of relish.

By the time you were done the number of flavours coursing inside of you had you stumbling to the door. Sans must have grabbed his own outerwear because he caught up wearing it, after putting the meal once again on his tab.

“yo. hey, you can slow down, pal.”

You giggled. It wasn’t like being drunk. Nothing impaired your senses, it just left you feeling overwhelmed. Sans coaxed you to lean on him for the walk back, but you rebuffed the action and took hold of his hand instead.

He stared for a moment, blinked, and continued walking. You could’ve sworn he looked bluer than usual.

The skeleton’s house quickly came into view. Just the sight of it, the sense of home and belonging, set a kind of exhaustion in your bones. You even yawned coming through the door.

“all right, c’mon. better go to bed,” Sans murmured, keeping his voice low for Papyrus’s sake. He’d be sound asleep by now. You clambered onto the couch, as usual.

“Thanks, Sans. Had a really great time,” you mumbled, eyes already trying to close. Sans brought your blanket and nudged you down onto the cushion you had for a pillow.

“shhh. i'm gonna go straight to sleep too.”

You closed your eyes and chuckled, feeling utterly comfortable, with a final murmur before dozing off. “You’re gonna have a _bed_ time.”

The idea of making this work, keeping this contentment, filled you with determination. You felt the blanket drop loosely over your back and thought you saw a dim flash of colour flare up as you fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole story is actually a cautionary tale about the danger of memes


	4. Fall & Fallibility

Breakfast the next morning was the most awkward thing you could possibly imagine. Papyrus had made spaghetti, again, despite nobody beside himself wanting to eat it, and nobody willing to put effort into pretending otherwise. Papyrus didn’t even notice, preoccupied as he was with questions about how your date had gone with his brother, unable to keep the enthusiasm out of his voice.

Sans just sat there in his usual chair. The grin plastered on his face was immovable.

You had been the first one awake that morning, the gravity of what you’d done sinking in the moment you opened your eyes. What you’d said to Sans, by accident. Being an accident didn’t change the reality of the situation. You’d curled up, arms thrown over your head, wishing it hadn’t happened. If you could just go back…

Well, technically, you always could go back. It had never seemed inviting before, but now the option weighed on your mind. A way out. That tempting, permanent loophole. But no. You sat through the inedible breakfast, gritting your teeth. Sans wouldn’t look at you. He didn’t eat. The dark tracks under his eyes were deep and haggard. He still replied to Papyrus, able to smile perfectly well so the taller skeleton noticed nothing amiss. At one point he did meet your gaze over the table and, despite not moving his cheerful features a fraction, something in the pinpoint of light in his eye sockets made your skin crawl.

“There’s not much to tell, honestly.”

“WHY DO YOU TWO INSIST ON WITHHOLDING THE DETAILS?” Papyrus’s irrepressible cheer made your stomach turn more than the food. “MY BROTHER AND A HUMAN GO ON A DATE AND REFUSE TO TELL ME ANYTHING THAT HAPPENED.” Your face is heating up. You just stare at your lap. “EVEN AFTER I WAS THE ONE WHO CAPTURED THEM! PERHAPS THEN, I SHOUDN’T PRY INTO SUCH… PERSONAL DETAILS.”

He’s reading your embarrassment all wrong, so wrong. You just want to get out of here, you can’t do this, and it’s not Papyrus’s fault, it’s yours, just yours. When you thought you couldn’t take it any more, the chair beside you slid back and slippered feet touched the ground before your own.

“nothin’ really happened, papyrus. honest. i'm gonna go take a walk.”

“A WALK?”

Papyrus’s confusion met nothing but the door closing behind his brother.

“SANS NEVER GOES FOR ‘WALKS’. IS HE ALL RIGHT?”

He looked to you, questioning and concerned. You couldn’t take this.

“I… um… I’ve gotta go out too.”

“HUMAN? ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?”

“Yeah, it’s fine. I need to think about something. I’ll be back later,” you weren’t even paying attention to your own words. You walked stiffly to the kitchen to get a glass of water, remembered that the sink was too high to reach, turned back, and headed outside.

“HUMAN, YOU DON’T HAVE A COAT! HUMAN!”

* * *

 Snow on every roof. Lights dancing in red, green, yellow. You half-heartedly returned the greetings monsters were giving you. They were used to you now, and you were used to them. If only they knew. You meandered around town, just taking it all in. You only had your shirt on, but you didn’t care. There was nothing in cold.

Past the library and the houses with lighted windows dotting the snowdrifts, past the families of monsters, parents keeping an eye on their kids, watching them play-fight and kick up powder on the ice, past the fir tree with tinsel and presents and you wished you had one to leave behind.

Looping around, you just wandered, to fix it all in your mind. You didn’t exactly know what else to do.

You turned back to the main route through the middle of town and spotted a familiar patch of blue. Then it was gone. You pressed on in search of it, faster. It came into view again as you passed the inn. He was heading straight out of town.

“Sans!”

The slouched figure didn’t seem to hear. At a faster pace you started to catch up, but he had a big lead. Snowdin lapsed into silence behind you, save for the crunching of your own feet, and, distantly, another pair.

“Sans!”

You had to talk to him. You had to say something about this. That he didn’t understand. He had already crossed the rope bridge across the chasm outside of town. You stepped onto it, not daring to take it at speed, and by the time you reached the middle he was almost out of sight. You just had to explain—

“Sans, come back!”

In the distance, he stopped, and then he was immediately in front of you.

You yelped and grabbed the rope barrier. Sans waited for a moment, right within arm’s reach. He wasn’t smiling.

“yeah?”

You were finding it hard to think. His clipped tone was so different from his regular drawl.

“i said, _yeah_?”

How did you even begin to explain this? You couldn’t take your eyes away from his, points of light burning into you.

“oh, so, you call at me, track me down, and y’got nothin’ to say? y'gonna make me the one that has to do this? you’re not gonna explain to me what this is all about?”

You swallowed.

“lemme sum this up for ya, okay, buddy? you seem t’know a lot about me. in fact, y’do a pretty good impression. of me. when i've got _nothing left_.” Only then did his expression change, smile faltering so his teeth would bare, mouth curling up at one side. “make it into a cute li’l joke, even. so you’ve been there, huh? had your fun, come back? thought you’d try and make friends this time around?”

You almost shook your head, but you didn’t want to acknowledge this. Any of it.

“y’come in here, bein’ friendly – y’know papyrus and i decided we oughta take you in. figured it was better if he asked you. stop you from getting hurt. keep you around, instead of going off and bumping into someone that knows you’re human.” His voice suddenly jumped in volume. “papyrus thinks you’re _friends._ ”

“I am—“

“he thinks he’s friends with his _own murderer_.”

“No no, it—“

The intensity of the growl Sans made in his throat interrupted you. This was the first time you’d seen him not look laid-back, hands out of his pockets, hunched over with his head down, and glowering like he could punch something.

“ _you’re_ the anomaly. _you’re_ what we kept looking for. you’re the reason i c-can’t fucking sleep.”

Your heart hammered and you knew you had nothing worth saying. You could’ve explained, tried to tell him that he was wrong. You could’ve pleaded. You could’ve sworn you’d never use your determination that way. It wouldn’t be any use. He knew. He was aware of your power and there was no way to prove you wouldn’t use it to do the worst things imaginable. You know, from looking at him, he can’t be convinced. Sans glared at you with unrestrained hatred. Brow furrowed, sweat beading on his cheeks, finger bones twitching.

The sight of it hit you down to the same level of despair. He _hated_ you. He’d never believe a word you said.

“how could you _do this_ to papyrus?” he snapped. “he trusts you. how could you make _me_ think—“

A sob tried to rise in your chest; you forced it down as he bit back what he was about to say. A slight breeze buffed the rope bridge to one side, but you refused to reach for support.

“You about done with this, Sans?”

“heh,” his smile was back, and it wasn’t a nice one. “i'm just wondering if you managed to kill me too. along with everyone else.” His assumptions were grating on you now. Frustration gave way to anger. “ _everyone_. but who cares, right? when you can go back like nothing ever happened? jeez, you’re—“

He stopped.

“Kind of a freak?” you sneer, with the most brazen look you could muster. The lights in Sans’ eyes went out. “I get the picture. Very clear. Don’t worry, you won’t have to see me again.”

You paused for a moment, about to say goodbye. You wanted it to sound final. As you looked at him, Sans disappeared.

The bridge swayed again in the wind. The farewell was held in your lungs even as you gasped. He’d teleported right in _front of_ you.

With a profound sense of everything left incomplete, you turned back towards the town.

It all blurred together. You didn’t look up. It was shattered, there was nothing left for you here. Your thoughts swam for what seemed like hours, and when you looked up, you were outside Sans and Papyrus’s house.

The idea it had once felt welcoming to you made your eyes blur. Would it even be right to go in? To see Papyrus? Did you have any belongings to collect?

No.

The door was already locked.

You pressed on. You hadn’t ever been that far past the edge of town where the skeletons lived. The path followed a river bank, straight through a level tundra. You bunched your fingers into the hem of your shirt as the cold bit them.

There was only one thing left for you to do. Head for New Home, get an audience with Asgore. You could leave… or you could try to make things right.

Maybe if you did, maybe, Sans might not despise you so much.

You were walking into mist. It was thick, clinging to your clothes. It became harder to walk in a straight line as the fog swarmed around you until you were near blind.

It dampened the sound of your footsteps into near total silence.

A bone erupted out of the ground in front of you. The sudden burst had you shrieking and jumping back into another one, a bone taller than you, and neon blue. More of them jumped up erratically, slicing out of the frosted soil at odd angles. You couldn’t move. You were surrounded, in a cage of bones.

“WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT H U R T I N G M Y B R O T H E R.”


	5. Reticent / Reverie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone wants to drop me a message or yell things at me or anything like that, you can always reach me over at [my tumblr.](http://pyreo.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Also thanks for all the kudos/responses, you guys have made it really fun to get back into fic writing again!

You watched Papyrus’s thick, heavy boots pace around, visible in-between the shafts of the several dozen bones which surrounded you. He wasn’t using magic, but you couldn’t lift your head. Not knowing why he was doing this.

“HUMAN, I _WARNED_ YOU,” he wasn’t that loud, but you flinched anyway. “I SAID THAT IF YOU WERE TO HURT SANS, THEN YOU’D HAVE TO ANSWER TO ME.”

The cold was deadening. Your clothes were damp from the mist, your fingers were red and you had no pockets.

“SO?” Papyrus came closer to the cage and bent down. He was trying to look at you. “SO, PLEASE ANSWER TO ME, HUMAN. WHAT HAPPENED?” He was right up against the bones, looking in. You chanced a look towards him and immediately regretted it. Papyrus was so confused. You’d become so used to seeing the joy in his features that he seemed a different person. “SANS IS… VERY UPSET.”

“I, uh…” you couldn’t just stand there silently until you froze to death. “I just t-talked to him. I guess it was more of an argument. What did he say?”

“I DIDN’T UNDERSTAND IT. HE CAME HOME AND TOLD ME YOU WOULD BE MOVING ON RIGHT AWAY AND THAT I SHOULDN’T LOOK FOR YOU.”

You chewed your chapped bottom lip and immediately regretted it, it felt like it would bleed. “You came anyway.”

“SANS CAN HARDLY STOP ME IF HE’S LOCKED IN HIS ROOM. PLEASE, HUMAN, WHAT’S GOING ON?”

You couldn’t stay with the skeleton brothers any more. You had to leave Snowdin. Sans had found out about your weird magic – not just the awareness of other timelines like himself, but the innate ability to control them. And now he had no way of knowing what you were capable of. The relationship you’d nurtured with Sans was most assuredly done with, and not in any way you could possibly explain to his brother.

“We just… disagreed on something. I don’t think we’re friends now.”

Were you choking up from saying it out loud, or was the ice catching in your throat?

“ _BUT WHY_?” Papyrus asked, gently. “YOU SEEMED TO BE GETTING ALONG WELL, IF I SAY SO MYSELF, UNTIL THAT DATE LAST NIGHT. SANS DOESN’T USUALLY HAVE THE… ENERGY TO DISLIKE PEOPLE. SO NEEDLESS TO SAY, I’M CONCERNED.”

He had a slight edge to his tone now, and when you peered out at the skeleton hunched over at the bars made of bone, his gaze was hard and unnerving. His limbs stuck out at sharp angles to compensate for being so tall.

“I DID ASK YOU… I ASKED YOU TO BE SURE BEFORE YOU ASKED SANS FOR ANYTHING. I HAD TO USE MY EXPERTISE AT DATING TO MAKE SURE MY BROTHER’S FIRST ATTEMPT HAD PROMISE. AFTER ALL, I, THE GREAT PAPYRUS, HAVE ENTHUSIASM TO SPARE!” The situation with Sans and his hatred for you was one thing, but the disappointment and struggle in Papyrus’s voice made you feel like scum. “I THOUGHT YOU LIKED HIM! …I THOUGHT YOU… UNDERSTOOD THAT HE’S,” another of those rare Papyrus pauses as he carefully selected a word, “NOT LIKE ME.”

“I did. I _swear_ , I do like him. Please, please just believe me, I didn’t want it to suddenly end like this.”

“BUT THEN, WHY WOULD SANS…”

“He’s angry with me, yeah. I said something stupid that I shouldn’t have, and I can’t take it back. I liked him a lot, Papyrus. I like both of you. But it’s better, because I’m human, if I leave now so I can go talk to Asgore.”

Papyrus stood up, thinking. Curiosity softened his expression.

“YOU’RE GOING TO SEE THE KING?”

“Y-yes. I’m going to see if we can work something out so things can be better for everyone. It’s pretty important. And I wish Sans and I were still friends. I think—“ you stopped and took a deep breath. With a little concentration, you closed your eyes. What was the best way to put this? A scene switched on in your mind’s eye, with dark blackness, Papyrus’s voice, a small room. Sans’s room. Guilt washed over you afresh as you admired the ease with which you ignored personal boundaries for this. For a way out, for personal gain. You cleared your throat. “I think I accidentally pranked him across time and space a little too hard.”

The skeleton towering over you chuckled.

“OH, I SEE. YOU KNOW, WITH THE AMOUNT MY BROTHER DOES THINGS LIKE THAT, YOU’D THINK HE COULD HANDLE A TASTE OF HIS OWN MEDICINE,” and you couldn’t help smiling slightly back at him. Again, guilt. You were getting off to lightly. This wasn’t a game. Sans thought his brother was confronting his own former murderer.

But he wasn’t, you tell yourself. Sans was wrong.

“IF YOU’RE GOING TO TRAVEL TO NEW HOME YOURSELF, THEN…”

Deft, gloved hands broke the barrier of white on white in front of you. Papyrus hefted out a few of his bones and moved aside, which allowed you to step out. A glimmer of warmth in you flickered as you slid out of the bone cage.

“I WON’T NEED TO CAPTURE YOU FOR THE ROYAL GUARD. I’M SURE THE KING WILL UNDERSTAND WHAT IT IS YOU NEED! HE’S SO NICE AND SO FRIENDLY.”

“Thank you, P-Papyrus.”

He looked down at you, clearly fighting a smile.

“WELL… YES. HUMAN, YOU LOOK COLD. YOU’D… BETTER BE GOING.”

“I’m sorry,” you blundered into the kind of emotional territory he obviously wanted to avoid, “sorry that the first human you tried to capture was such a crappy one.” Papyrus fidgeted with his tattered scarf to better arrange it over his shoulders. “I’m sorry, but thanks for trying to be my friend.”

“IF THERE’S ONE THING I CAN ASK FOR, HUMAN,” he said while deliberately not looking at you.

“Yes?”

Papyrus tapped one of his bones, still clustered around a small circle of the ground. “PROMISE ME YOU WON’T HURT ANYONE ELSE.”

He was already walking away. He’d go back to Sans. They would be all right together.

“I promise!” you shouted to the armoured figure disappearing into the mist, but he was gone before you saw any indication that he heard.

You hurried away from the area, sick of the fog, and you couldn’t feel your toes. The sooner you got away from Snowdin the sooner you could feel like this was put behind you. Within two minutes though, you were hurrying back, crunching your way to the arrangement of bones that had encased you. You picked up one of the white ones Papyrus had left on the ground. It was rough and frozen to the touch, and you tested its weight. Not heavy at all. Not too long, about half your own height.

You left the scene a second time, bone held tightly at your side.

You were probably going to need it.

The cold felt, and you hated your own mind for using the term after all this, but ‘bone deep’ really applied. The only thing that kept you moving was that as you pushed on, it became a little easier to breathe. The white banks around the path became darker, and eventually a deep, rocky indigo. Your breath stopped clouding in front of you.

You were nearing Waterfall. Knowing it would be necessary now, you mentally checked the timelines again without too much of a stab of guilt. The Captain of the Royal Guard would try to stop you from making it through the caves, that was always certain. Undyne could not be reasoned with, and could not be dissuaded, that was also certain. However, Papyrus wouldn’t be there to inform her about you.

You mentally flicked between timeline scenarios as you entered the tunnel system. You were starting to get caught up in the specifics of Papyrus’s influence when you stopped walking, in front of another sentry station.

Plain wood, just like the ones before in the forest, right down to the snow still blanketing the roof. You grinned in spite of yourself. Good job, Sans. Amusement and loneliness created a strange mixture in you as you left the empty sentry point behind.

The flowers whispered as you passed.

Monsters in Waterfall were a more lonesome type than the tight community of Snowdin, at least until you showed up. Each one you encountered met your combination of determination-imbued fearlessness and the guilt of what you’d left behind. You lay on the floor with Moldbygg and chatted about your dating woes (Moldbygg replied in bloops and rumbles, but you had the feeling they ‘got’ you). The passes Aaron made at you, flicking his mer-tail at you and winking, turned into a very disappointed flex when he realised you just weren’t at all interested. You dunked your face repeatedly into Woshua’s basin water, wailing “How could I?! I ruined it, I ruined everything! How did I get it _this_ wrong?!” while the little bird tweeted and Woshua burbled agreement. “Wosh u soul,” he calmly intoned. “Wosh u hands and eyes.”

You went on, and there was no sign of a pursuit.

You lost yourself for about an hour, reading the plaques and sketches that chronicled the history of the monsters with nothing but the sound of the pier creaking and lapping water. You’d heard most of it, you’d inferred it and got the gist of it from reading timelines. But now the whole story was here, open in front of you, and it immersed you utterly as you traced your fingers along the inscribed letters on the walls. Humans drove them underground, humans sealed them in. They had hope and angels and prophecies to keep them going. Now you, a human, were down there with them, and none of them knew it.

You kept your bone clutched tight with every step.

The caverns had polished rocks that glittered on the walls and ceiling. You entered a wider room and took in the refractions, scattering further and further into the caves, and didn’t even realise for a second that someone was here with you.

An aquatic looking monster, propped up on a scaled tail, looking over her shoulder at you. Her hair, anemone-like fronds, obscured much of her face. Unlike many others you’d met she made no attempt at conversation. She just stared back at you, then hummed a solitary note.

You tapped the end of your bone against your foot and decided to respond in kind. The same note. A fin on the side of her head twitched, and she sang out a simple tune.

Following her song, as soon as the monster’s confidence grew you realised her music was magical. Her music felt like it would wrap around you, engulf you, even harm you. Advantageous as it was for monsters to not realise you were human, you had to withstand assaults they never realised they were making on your physical body.

So you danced.

Only a little at first, to shuffle back and forth out of the melody’s grasp. Just swaying your body stopped the sounds from getting a hold on you. But as you matched the rhythm, the singing monster upped her range and sang loud enough to fill the cavern. It seemed so silly, dangerous all at once, and even then, it was fun. You actually smiled and danced like you meant it, giving her even more reason to free her voice. You stepped in time, curved your body. The music itself couldn’t touch you. The singer reached a crescendo you never would have imagined she could do when you first noticed how shy she was, and as you swept your feet forth and back, twisting among the notes, you had to wonder if she’d had the same impression about you. You twirled your bone, tossed it in the air, caught it and accentuated your moves with it like a baton.

The sea-monster girl finished her song and was short of breath, as were you, and you gave each other a mutual wave. You could move on. Something caught your eye. In the cavern’s depths, some distance away – maybe just the reflections from the stones, from the water pools, but it looked like a particular shade of blue disappearing into darkness without a movement.

You trudged onward. You acted like it was nothing. You weren’t going to get ahead of yourself. And you absolutely refused to let embarrassment rise over your performance in the case that nothing had been something. But still, you supposed, it might be nice. It might be, you pondered. If by some chance he wasn’t as done with you as you’d been led to think.


	6. Ore Wa Zettai Akiramenai

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fivetail helped me pick the most appropriate title for this chapter. Also Manicscribble did a beta read, thanks pals!

_“I fought them valiantly._

_What? Did I capture them…?_

_W-well. I tried very hard, Undyne, but in the end…_

_I failed.”_

You sat in one of the star-encrusted caverns, enjoying the view while licking a Nice Cream. Your clothes had been damp for some time now, and you were practically used to it. You’d been taking your time, following the murals along the cave walls and reading all the inscriptions about monster history and the war that first separated biological people from monsters.

That, and you occupied yourself by reading the timelines.

What began as a deja-vu-ridden mess, clouding your thoughts the moment you’d fallen down here, you’d now learned to view more clearly and deliberately. You couldn’t see _yourself_ through the other timelines, not your own past or future. It was a window, not a mirror. Others who followed the same path, meeting the same people, and making the same mistakes. You were connected to all of them, you assumed. All the others would see your timeline, your process, and the mistakes you were yet to begin making. All walking the same route, just because that was what they saw. Like the blind with second sight leading the blind.

Everyone had to pass through Waterfall. And when they did, a brave knight would seek to stop them. Your path had diverged. You couldn’t sift for specific timelines, but you could sense the density of the events therein. And almost every timeline, damn near every single one, no matter the actions taken, you would be found – outed as a human – by Undyne. And she would battle you, intending to kill.

But this one, your own, the world on which you’d imprinted your unique self, you’d seen no sign of her. Quite the anomaly, you thought, smirking with a certain fondness at that particular term. Because in most other worlds, Papyrus – ambitious, kindly Papyrus – would tell Undyne everything.

Well, in this world, he’d woshed his hands of you altogether.

You sighed. There was no use sitting around and looking at what might have been. The further afield you cast your sight the harder it became to see, and there was no sense in searching for hollow comforts that would leave you with a headache. Maybe you didn’t need Sans _or_ Papyrus. Maybe you’d do even better without them. Maybe you’d stay undercover and ask out the Nice Cream guy.

You tapped the end of your bone against the rocky floor, grounding your thoughts with the sound, before hefting it to your side and making your way onward.

 

* * *

 

 

“I hope Papyrus is doing okay back in Snowdin,” your words rang clear and bounced off the slick, moist walls. “Well, and I hope you’re doing okay too.”

This was your distraction. Kept your mind off your sodden clothing and perpetually drenched socks. It was tempting, in the dark and alone, to keep consulting the fibres of timelines, weaving amongst each other, trailing off on tangents, but you shouldn’t do that too often.

“I didn’t get to thank you guys. I know you weren’t interested in hearing it, but I should’ve said thanks for letting me stay, it was so thoughtful.”

Talking stopped you from over-focusing on the patter of droplets and the distant, perpetual running water. You couldn’t keep jumping at every noise. Your voice seemed too loud for the enclosed, dark space.

“If I had some way to repay that, I would. I mean, I’m trying to. That’s what I’m gonna do, if I make it.”

You’d known he was following you for some time now.

Not always actively, not watching you, but you’d glimpsed Sans often enough to know what he was doing.

“You’re one for keeping tabs, aren’t’cha?” you’d mumbled to one of the flowers you passed a while back. Your words rang on repeat behind you. You passed by a stone statue of a sitting, horned monster, with light and rain flowing in overhead. Each drop that pattered down the statue sounded a soft note, and even in the time you’d walked through that hallway, you knew the tune. You’d heard it before, every other person in your place had heard it, and the memory swam through the timelines and imparted itself across space and time.

Rope bridges suspended over a deep cavern, and you cursed the absurd monster inclination for bridges over impossible heights. But no adversaries lurked in those shadows, and you made haste, undeterred. The cavern sloped down until you were back at the water’s edge, making your way from flower to flower, the only sure light sources in the gloom. You murmured your messages to them, for them to pass on.

“If this works, if we can all get out of here…”

“Out of here—out of here—“ the flowers chorused.

“Will you watch a sunrise with me?”

The words ran away from you, whispers fading, echoing the message in your wake.

You found a boardwalk and made your way across. It wasn’t over water – it seemed to be over nothing. And it didn’t seem to have an end. You listened to the soft tap of your shoes on the wood, interrupted by a different noise. A short, low, magical hum.

You stopped dead. Terrified memories tried to press panic into your vision. Something bright seared past your shoulder, and three cyan spears shattered into nothing on the boards where you would have been if you’d kept walking.

 _Shit_.

Your wet shoes slipped as you started trying to run too fast. You picked up just enough speed to clear more spears, crashing down behind you. There were multiple paths left and right, then forward and left, and you picked without thinking. Your right hand stayed locked around the bone you now wielded, desperate not to let go.

Undyne had finally found you. You forced yourself not to look down as you took a sharp corner, hoping it would shake off the close assault. How had she known? Unable to help it, you looked back to seek out any sign of the royal knight. A glare of bright blue from directly above caught your eye, and you saw her. Far above you, along a cliff face on the cavern’s side, she was in full armour that shone with the glow of the spears she summoned and threw, smashing to pieces like magical glass against your heels.

She was terrifying. Knowing what to expect from the timelines hadn’t prepared you for the real thing. You continued to run and tried to keep breathing—how had she found you? If not Papyrus, then what had tipped her off?

Your breath caught and you changed your mind, turning back for the left fork instead of right. Someone _else_ who wanted you dead?

Sans…?

You tried to reject the idea, but you still regretted telling everything to the flowers.

The boardwalk over nothingness joined paths into a platform, somehow spanning the darkness like it was nothing. You just ran. You forced everything out of your head except running, taking the only route that continued on – and there was nothing to see ahead.

The wooden struts that formed the path came to an abrupt stop.

You spluttered, wondering desperately if there had been a correct turn or if the whole thing had been a dead end. Nothing lay ahead but endless darkness. And behind?

Your head dropped with an exaggerated sigh. When you looked up, the glint of Undyne’s eye through her helmet looked back at you. She stood across the only escape, entirely suited in steel. You could tell from her grandiose pose that she was savouring your helplessness, the red plume on her helm fluttering in triumph.

With both hands, you held your bone out in front of you, the only kind of defence you had.

Trying to stare her down without showing fear, you didn’t notice the spears manifesting in the air until they hit, a precise array splintering the wood in front of you. You thought to yourself, as you tumbled back and found nothing to support your weight, that you must have just made a mistake along the way.

A terrible rush of déjà vu hit you. _Falling, again._ It flooded back; the regret, the terror, wanting another chance, the desperate clutching at rocks, air, for anything that could let you try again and _not die_ —

There was nothing but darkness below you. No sound. You shut your eyes. _Last time, you lived. Last time you lived. Last time—_

Something thick and warm and soft pulled you in. Firmly, deliberately. For the clearest of moments, everything in the universe stopped. You were nothing. And then you were real again, gasping with shock, and the ground was there, not moving, you’re not moving. The ground was flat under you and you felt it without opening your eyes.

Splinters, pieces of wood, still water.

You were safe.

For a while, you lay there in the puddle. It was enough to have survived. You couldn’t see high enough to spot where you had fallen down, and aside from some grazes, you were totally unharmed. You kept testing your fingers and toes, just to make sure.

Eventually you stood, testing your balance in the murky water. It was very dim in the area, and you could just make out the shape of awkward piles of discarded furniture and garbage all around. You found yourself scanning the blackness behind them for any sign of something familiar.

“Thank you,” you spoke as loudly as you could muster, and started walking.

 

* * *

 

 

It took some time to work your way through the accumulated refuse. At one point, you noticed a sheer drop to one side with water cascading off. All the way through, trudging slowly across the rubbish mire, you held onto your long white bone. Just like you it had come down perfectly intact.

You spotted a broken fridge after some time, and, realising at that moment you hadn’t eaten in a while, you went to open it. You almost berated yourself for the idea – why would a fridge be down here with anything edible in it? Until it proved to contain some strange vacuum-sealed nutrient tubes. Fair enough. You grabbed them and chewed one as you continued through the soggy mess, letting yourself dwell on the timelines some more.

Universal constants. Seemed like every human down here had to make that fall, you could feel all the threads unify for that moment, and sense the shared terror that had resonated when you’d heard Undyne’s attack. But the others, you couldn’t help noting, hadn’t come through it with the same amount of style.

Instead of leaving it to denial this time, you settled down in the first spot of solid ground, an open cavern with many exits, and let yourself prepare. You found out Undyne would accost you again as you tried to leave for Hotland. You divined the route and checked the outcomes, which layered over each other like faint sketches to form one complete, solid line—

Undyne would never, ever give up. Never, in any timeline, would she relent in the same way Papyrus had. You ran a hand through your dampened hair and thought hard about a way to get out of this. You had to survive against Undyne without fighting back, but convince her to stop. How? Under your own circumstances you felt like you’d end up dead. But, then again, you’d thought that twice now. So what if Undyne never had mercy on anyone in any timeline you had at your fingertips? So what? Nobody else in your position had been rescued from a lethal fall by being teleported down to the ground, either.

If you were an anomaly you were going to start acting like it.

You wandered the area for a while, checking all the connecting caves except the one to the east. Undyne waited for every human down there. Through one passage you discovered a snail ranch and the same ghost monster you’d first met back in the ruins. How long ago that was now, you didn’t know. But you caught up with them a little while in the back of your head you searched out information – not about how Undyne attacked humans, but other things. Like her flair for being overdramatic. Once you had everything in mind, you moved on.

As you neared the right junction, the cave air got warmer.

You took a deep breath, and for the first time in ages you felt a frission of determination.

“Seven. Seven human souls, and King Asgore will become a god.”

That was her voice, clear and forceful, blaring down at you from high in the cavern. You could see Undyne at the top of a jagged precipice. She was half in shadow, backlit by an orange glow from the distance.

“Six. That’s how many we have collected thus far. Understand?”

“Perfectly,” you replied, finding your voice deep and resonant here. You tapped your white bone against your leg for reassurance. “I’m more use to all of you dead than alive. You all want my soul, and then you’ll be saved.” Undyne turned around sharply, a glare shining in her eye even from that distance. “That’s all I am to you, isn’t it? I’m selfish.”

“NNNGAHHH. I should’ve known you’d be an insolent human! All right, look. Papyrus didn’t come to his meeting today. Say what you want about him, but he’s _never_ missed a meeting. And when I called, he told some terrible lie about a dog stealing his phone, so he couldn’t talk right now.” You could see Undyne shaking her head, and with a theatrical head toss, she pulled off her helm. Her hair now streamed out behind her like a wisp of blood, and she glared down at you. You could see fangs. “He should have reported to me that a human—wait a second.”

You yelped and jumped aside. Undyne had leapt from her perch and was on you instantly, landing with immense, heavy force. You stumbled but tried to keep your composure.

“WHERE did you get that!”

She was pointing to the bone in your hand.

“A gift from Papyrus,” you half-lied. “He fought me and then let me go.”

Undyne gasped in shock. That part, in a way, had actually been true.

“Why?! Why would he—I’ll ask him later. Right now? NOW, you have to defend yourself! Get ready, punk,” she smiled, an awful toothy grimace made more threatening by her eyepatch. “With your soul we can all finally be free!”

The knight raised her spear. She lunged, and with a clash, you had your hands up in time to knock the weapon aside. Another sweep, backhand, and you caught the brunt of the blow on the bone again. Heart hammering, you cast a glance down at your weapon. It still seemed sturdy, with notches and a scratch or two, but it was holding against the metal spear somehow.

Undyne growled, raising her hand over her head. Four sizzling, glowing spears formed directly over you, and fell one by one. Swing by swing, you deflected each one, letting out a surprised bark of triumph as you did.

“What? HOW!” You don’t look like a trained warrior, human!”

“I’m not. Although I am trained in something else.”

The onslaught of magical spears ramped up in speed and precision as Undyne became more incensed. You were annoying her, and it felt good. You decided to save the bone for when you truly needed it, and you focused on dodging each blow. Undyne could only cast one spear at a time, no matter how fast the interval, which gave you the right rhythm to jump back or shimmy to one side.

Even though Undyne threw her spears as fast as she could manifest them, your feet had found their tempo. You could sway, you could bend, you ducked to one side and back again. Being a dancer was now an offensive skill.

“I don’t want to fight you, Undyne,” you panted, breathless but invigorated. “I’m not going to fight back.”

“THEN WHY ARE YOU MAKING THIS SO HARD,” she snarled back. Her red hair kept scattering across her face. Clearly waning in magical energy she thrust with her real spear instead. You were just fast enough, unrestricted by any armour, to club the spear tip with your bone and keep it from getting near you. She sneered. “I knew humans were strong, but… but…”

A memory came to you, whether your own or from a parallel thread, you couldn’t be sure. In the original war between humans and monsters, not one single human had been killed. If you had wanted to, you could probably eliminate Undyne yourself right now. It had you surging with adrenaline and guilt, but the thought also steeled you for what you needed to do.

On the next lunge of her spear, you danced to one side, completed the turn, and grabbed hold of the shaft on your next step. Then you pulled. Undyne lurched forward. Her spear wrenched free and clanged to the floor, and you finished the move by sweeping the knight down into your arms and dipping her as much as you could with her weight.

It was a classic finish.

“I, uh—“

You grinned. “I won’t fight you, Undyne. Sorry.”

She recovered from the fluster and huffed away to retrieve the spear.

“I’m trying to get to Hotland so I can meet Asgore myself. I just want to talk with him.”

“What IS all this talking and dancing? I thought humans LOVED fighting! And using sparkly transformation sequences so they can fight even harder!”

“Not all of us do.”

“You, human, are the last soul we need to escape this place. Everybody’s hopes and dreams rest on you!”

“I know. I know you look at me, and you see freedom. I want that too, I want everybody to get out of here.” Undyne, with her arm and spear extended towards you, lowered her weapon slightly. “For all the friends I’ve made, in Snowdin and in Waterfall. I want all of us to get out, together.”

The next blow came so suddenly, you only just had the bone up in time to block. Before you could make another move, Undyne swung her spear sideways and clobbered your head with the blunt end.

Pain rang in your ears, and you groaned and gasped. It hurt so much you couldn’t see.

“You expect me to believe that?” Undyne crowed. “You want to march right up to Asgore together just so you can escape through the barrier and leave us all here for god knows how much longer?”

“Yeah, yep,” you rubbed your palm along your face. “Kinda thought you’d get where I was coming from here.” You waggled your trusty weapon at her. “Guess that makes me a real bonehead, huh?”

“NGGAAHHHHH!!!”

You tried to pick yourself up and move, but you were sluggish. You might have been more nimble than Undyne, but you had none of her stamina. You were still trying to gasp for breath after this ordeal when she kicked you down with her steel boot.

“I’m NOT letting you go. So why won’t you fight back?”

You whimpered. This hurt, this really hurt.

“Because, I… I want to be worth more than just a key. I want to leave with everyone I’ve met beside me. Like Shyren and Woshua and the Greater and Lesser dogs, and the rabbit sisters who own the store and the inn, and Grillby, and Papyrus, and… Sans.” Maybe it was the bruising and fatigue that made your eyes blur with tears. “I want to walk out of here _with Sans_. And with you too, Undyne. I have friends too!”

Undyne approached you, but that was all you could see. Everything was too hazy. You choked as you tried to breathe, and couldn’t bring yourself to sit upright any more. The stomp of her heavy boots became louder, and you knew she was on you.

Thinking about the people you’d miss – that you already missed – had drained you of energy. You couldn’t tell, right now, what was worth more in their eyes; your friendship or your soul.

“Just—fine,” you stammered out, “I won’t fight you. This is me, surrendering. I… can’t.”

You closed your eyes and the last of your strength disappeared. As you fell unconscious, the last thing you felt was being picked up by strong, cold arms.


	7. I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire

You were dimly aware of music playing. Something soft and slow, on a piano. The sound gradually coaxed your consciousness back into being, and it reminded you of the raindrop tunes pattering through Waterfall’s caves. It also made you think of home.

Gingerly, you flexed your fingers, toes and limbs. You remembered being picked up and carried. To safety. Safety from… Undyne. You sat up, touching your sore head.

The music stopped.

“You’re back, huh.”

Undyne’s voice. You forced yourself to blink a few times and she said nothing else while you looked around.

It was a bright and cosy room, with an open kitchen at one end. Bright patterns across the walls and floor. You were lying on something hard, which as you sat up, turned out to be a large table with a blanket draped hastily over it, and to your side, seated at a grand piano, was the Captain of the Royal Guard.

“You didn’t kill me,” you said, in dull surprise.

“Don’t start. I’m thinking about what to do with you.”

Very carefully, you edged yourself to the side of the table and swung your legs over, sitting more naturally.

“Really? Like, uh… you need to pick your favourite _method_ , or what?”

Undyne glared at you, skimming her fingers along the keys, playing something jaunty, yet threatening.

“That stuff you said during our fight,” she sneered at you over the open lid of the piano. “I’ve seen enough of your human history documentaries to know that people with good intentions don’t just suddenly spout off a load of crap about friendship. Not even when it’s cheesy as hell,” she glared at you, as though daring you to call her out on anything she’d just said. “But it’s not about you. If you really are friends with some of us, if this is why Papyrus was acting so freakin’ weird, then I don’t want to upset them by killing you without… asking them first.”

“Oh,” you said.

Undyne came over to inspect you. She looked you over and you just sat there, bemused and still sore.

“I always thought humans would be more…” Undyne’s fins wiggled. Her expression was somehow distasteful. “I don’t know. _More_. And you’re not even a warrior.” She had her hand out, gesturing as if your entire being displeased her.

You looked down, expecting to see what she meant by your usual, casual-looking self. Instead, you realised with a shock that your body was almost unrecognisable. You hadn’t realised how your time underground had been changing you. Your skin had been scuffed, grazed, bumped, and showed a bunch of colourful marks as mementos from your tussle with the fish warrior. You were dirty, terribly so. Having been through days of frozen wetness, and more recently warm clammy wetness, your clothes were not only ripped and ruined but also dampened out of shape completely.

“I didn’t realise I was such a mess,” you said, patting one hand into your hair. It felt kind of disgusting, gritty and unclean.

“Yeah, well, you know what, punk? If you’d been wearing anything halfway appropriate for a fight, I… definitely wouldn’t have kept you alive until now. You fell down here by accident, huh? Not looking for a battle in those squishy rags.”

You just shook your head. This was all starting to catch up to you.

“I mean, you’re right,” you stammered out, defeatedly. “I didn’t expect any of this. I haven’t been prepared for anything that’s… well. _Befallen_ me.”

You flicked your eyes up to Undyne and impishly gave the _tiniest_ smile.

The knight captain squinted down. “Was that a _joke_?”

“Uh… maybe.”

“…How long were you with those skeleton brothers?”

You started to explain a little about how you’d come to live with Papyrus and his brother for a while. It didn’t feel normal to be recounting these life events to someone who seriously had tried to kill you, but as you pointed out as many believable details as you could, mentioning as many kindly monster personalities as you could remember and how appreciative of them you were, you realised that Undyne would have a much harder time trying to collect your soul now that she’d spared you.

“Okay, look,” said Undyne, after you ran out of names to drop. “I gotta think. And you, no offense, _punk_ , but you look like garbage. And not the good kind.” Her webbed hand, none too gently, flicked the edge of your tattered, ruined clothes. “And seeing as right now I’m _technically_ your host, because you’re not actually dead yet, I can’t let you sit there and shrivel up in some dripping rags and possibly die. NOT WHILE I’M STILL DECIDING IF YOU CAN OR NOT. So wait here.”

You watched her stomp over to the door beside her kitchen and disappear.

While waiting you finally realised just how uncomfortable your state had gotten. It had been pushed out of your mind by other things like escaping and surviving, and now you were in a comfy and well-furnished home it felt disgusting. It almost felt absurd, since you were still on edge and terrified of Undyne, but you also starting wondering if a fish monster would own a shower.

She returned with a quick snap of the door, holding a hefty stack of clothes. You stared and forgot to blink.

“I’m not letting anybody call me rude to guests!!!”

Undyne carried a neat-ish pile in each hand, going as far as to hold them both up over her head as she went to the table, and glanced back over her shoulder. She looked menacing with flexed muscles, but they were still only clothes. Both piles slammed down.

“I’ve grown out of all this, so I don’t care what might happen to it. Was gonna give it away anyway. So pick something!”

You glanced over at Undyne constantly while hurriedly flipping through the garments, trying your best not to seem ungrateful.

“Um, sorry—this is really nice of you. Thanks. Can I, um, can I use your bathroom to put these on?”

“Oh sure!! Why not!!!” You couldn’t even tell if that sounded sarcastic. Her head tilted toward the other side of the room, messy red hair spilling over her shoulder. “Do whatever you want in there. I’ll be staying right here until you come out. Go NUTS.”

Cluster of odd garments in hand, you shut yourself in the bathroom as quickly and calmly as possible and leaned against the door. You allowed yourself a few breaths before hurrying to strip off your clammy, ripped clothes. Even when they were off, your body had accumulated too much grime to properly see the accrued damages.

Undyne did own a shower. You swore it would be a short one. Once you were standing there with warm, _gloriously_ warm water pouring over yourself, splashing away the muck, you forgot to keep track of time. Your skin warmed up, not looking so drained. You washed all the gunk and grease out of your hair. Nothing made a shower feel better than longer amounts of time without getting to have one.

As soon as you shut the water off, you heard the vigorous playing of a piano. Something sad crystallised in your chest. Undyne was talented, protective, and strong. You honestly admired those things. You understood why she would want to keep you from hurting everyone she cared about. Those plaques along the cave walls had illustrated just what monsters thought of humans. They were scared. And you didn’t want Undyne to be scared of you, or vice versa. Your first-hand experience with Undyne finally caught up with the way you’d gleaned her traits by seeing her actions in the multiverse.

Redressing was not as simple as it could’ve been. You had a few handfuls of bits and pieces – even underwear. A few shirts went on and came straight off again. Too small or tight or the fact that one was a crop top. You ended up layering a form-fitting undershirt with an odd, leathery strappy thing, with slitted textures cut across the stomach and back. It had an aquan feel to it, but also felt tough like light armour. It had buckles around your hips. And the best fitting lower garment was a set of loose military trousers with a hell of a lot of pockets, secured with suspenders. Black all-terrain boots came with them.

You ran your hair through with a towel and returned to Undyne’s living room. She had been kicking up a jazzy piano number, but stopped on an extended note when she saw you. You supposed it must’ve been weird, seeing a human in her own clothing.

“Hey…” you filled the silence. “Do you know what day it is?”

“ _Day_?” she sneered. “You’re assuming we use the same dating system as your fancy surface world?”

You slipped your hands sheepishly into your new pockets.

“Nah, I’m kidding, punk. It’s Sunday,” said Undyne. You looked up.

“Oh.”

“Why’s that matter?”

“It doesn’t really—I mean, I suppose it doesn’t now I’m down here. I was losing track of time. I missed my performance last night.”

“Hm,” it was a grunt that sounded reluctantly compassionate. “Performance?”

“Yeah. Dancing. I had a good part, was looking forward to it. But I guess they had to replace me.”

“You mean like what you did when I fought you.”

“I love dancing. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been _really_ good at,” you started smiling. “I practise very hard. I like being able to put all my energy into something and focus everything on just moving. You know? I can throw all my emotions into it, like the music becomes an extension of your soul—“

You stopped. You’d been babbling. But Undyne wasn’t looking at you with visible hostility any more. For a while she said nothing, and then you saw her hands move into natural place on the piano keys. She tapped them into a slow tune; serene, thoughtful. The one you’d been hearing as you woke up. She stopped abruptly.

“Okay. Listen. I’m going to go back to Snowdin and check in on my guards. And recruit. I’m going to check how all this matches up to what you told me. You’re not staying here while I’m gone, so you have to leave. And don’t get any funny ideas, because you don’t know the Underground like I do. I can find you again and kill you. EASY. Got it?”

You nodded.

“And you can’t hide, because I know someone who has cameras hidden all over and will help me track down anyone I can’t find. So go ahead. Do whatever you want for now! We’ll be watching. And I’ll decide what to do with you.”

It wasn’t acceptance, but you felt a rush of emotion as if it had been. Undyne seemed to read your face and her lip curled into a grimace so frightening you neutralised your expression and decided not to act grateful.

“I understand.”

“Hmph,” Undyne marched past you and unlocked her door. You could see she was about to gesture you out when your memory jogged.

“Oh! Hey, sorry, but you know that bone I had earlier? What happened to it? Can I have it? …It means a lot to me.”

There was a moment of consideration in which you realised how absurd you sounded, to be escaping the wrath of the Royal Knight and then asking for your own weapon back. But to your shock, she left the door and went to her kitchen, pulling open one of the cabinet drawers. Inside were a couple dozen large bones, pristine and white, some adorned with red bows. And on top of them, slightly longer and covered in scratches, was yours.

You accepted the bone back from Undyne at the door and quickly stepped out. She didn’t have any parting words or even a stern look – the door was slammed closed before you could turn around.

You stepped towards the middle of the small cave, rubbing your thumb against your bone. It felt good, safer, to have it back. Around the house was a kind of garden. A dimly lit path showed the way out, and you spotted one of those stuffed dummies staring at you from the corner. You stared back, until it started glaring and hopping toward you.

“Yeah, that’s right! Keep walkin’, kid!”

 

\-----

 

You easily found your way back to the lake, retracing your steps as you’d approached Hotland. The passageway got warmer, glowing brighter, as you neared the area, and you made your way to the foot of the tall crag where you’d met Undyne before. You ducked down and headed through it.

A blazing electric sign above you read “WELCOME TO HOTLAND.”

You could hardly believe it, but you were doing it. Making progress, getting closer to your goal. After the dripping, clammy caverns of Waterfall you couldn’t wait to embrace the warmth mounting with every step. You were cleaned up and comfortable. Your clothes were definitely more adventure-appropriate.

The literal _magma_ stretching out in all directions like a glowing sea was a bit of a surprise. The brightness was too much for your eyes at first, and you squinted. No more mushroom lights. You’d walked out onto a precipice, a chunk of rock towering over the magma far below. Ahead of you, an open bridge onto the next island, and there… Sans?

Surely the heat shimmer in the air was lying. You approached and took it all in. There was his usual wooden sentry stand. There was Sans, leaning back in his chair like he didn’t have a care in the world, grin plastered on his face. You stopped in front of him. His eyes were closed. Asleep, maybe. Forcing you to make the first move.

Well, you weren’t going to.

You walked on past like it was nothing. You didn’t _have_ to stop for him. Not if he didn’t care. After putting a decent distance between yourself and the sentry post, you spun around.

Sans was staring at you, frowning. He quickly slumped back into his chair as you backtracked to him. Ha. Calling his bluff gave you a little confidence. His expression clicked back to its pinned smile immediately.

“Well,” you said.

“hey.”

You just looked at each other. It was so warm that Sans looked out of place in his thick hoodie, but not really any sweatier than usual.

“not a lot to say, huh?” he droned, voice monotone. “’cause you were talkin’ a lot more back there.”

He meant the flowers.

“Mm. Yeah. So you heard those?”

Sans casually winked his right eye. “bit of advice, kid? don’t make promises ya can’t keep.”

It hadn’t been much of a promise. But you felt like your face was burning and it took you a second to get anything out.

“That wasn’t it. You’re supposed to wish on the echo flowers, right?”

“true. although, that last one really didn’t sound like a wish. more like a threat.”

You snapped up to look at him. Sans was leaning on his counter, looking for all the world like he was relaxed enough to doze off.

“i guess i’m hoping ya didn’t leave that one.”

He could stay utterly still when he wanted, grinning like no tomorrow, but the tiniest hard edge had seeped into his voice. It chilled you, especially since you had no idea what he meant. You mutely shook your head.

“figures.”

You weren’t sure if you should be embarrassed or confused. That definitely hadn’t been what you were expecting. Sans, not to be caught out again, seemed content to just sit there and stare at you until something happened.

“You know… when I was little, I used to wish I had magic powers.”

Sans tilted a little. You knew none of that fixed smile was really for you. “yeah?”

“I think a lot of humans do it. Maybe it’s escapism fantasies, or maybe… knowing what I know now, it could be left over from when we _could_ do actual magic. We see magic as so amazing, and alien, it’s weird to know what we did with it. Anyway, I used to wish I could do just little things, like making fire with my hands. Or jumping off a step and willing myself to fly. I used to stare at my fingers and try to focus… something? Energy? I don’t know. Just to try and make something happen. I never thought that if I got actual magical powers, it would be warping time itself and seeing alternate universes.” You didn’t look to see his reaction. “I don’t know why I can and I wish I couldn’t.”

“i'm hearin’ ya, kid. it just depends what you’ve _done_ with it.”

“I _haven’t_. I haven’t moved my timeline. I can’t even see it,” it felt odd to have this conversation on an island over a magma pit, open but with thick, heavy air. “I don’t want to use it at all. And I’ve only been watching the other timelines to figure out what to do because nobody would _help_ me.”

“you know that’s not how people _usually_ get to know each other, right.” You sighed. That seemed overly obvious, but he continued. “i’m all for breaking down magical barriers. personal ones? not so much. everyone you’ve met, they, uh, don’t know you can go fish for information about them, peek at their lives so you can work out what they wanna hear. they're _people_ , not puzzles, yeah? they don’t know you have the power to instantly rewind their lives. destroy their world.” A moment ago you’d been wishing Sans would clue you in, but now the more he talked, the more helplessly uneasy you felt. “they don’t know _how powerful you are_.”

“Nobody knows that about you, either.”

Beady white pupils locked with yours. You frowned at him, waiting to see how he’d take it. If you were going down you were taking him with you.

“dunno what you mean, bud,” he said, blinking. He looked away from you.

The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. It was a conversation more thought than heard. Sans’s bright little eyes looked you over.

“you got new clothes?”

“Yeah. Undyne gave me some.”

“uh… undyne did?”

“Uh-huh. We’re besties. Or maybe I killed her in her own home and took her stuff. Hard to tell, right?”

Sans laughed, but he didn’t sound amused. “you’re somethin’ else, kid.” His total lack of reaction was starting to get to you.

“Sans?” the tone in your voice, exasperation and honestly, had him paying more sincere attention. “Maybe if I were taking this lightly, I would have time jumped by now. You don’t know how easy that would’ve been. I thought about it, the morning after what I said to you. One backtrack and I’m arriving in Snowdin again. Meeting Papyrus again. Going to Grillby’s with you again. Doing it better this time, not fucking up. I didn’t want it to be like that. And you’d never know. I could start over with no mistakes and impress you more and more. I could go back and live our first date twenty times.” He actually looked nervous. He was sweating. The more evasive he tried to be, the more blunt you were going to get. His eyes were dancing side to side. “…I don’t _want_ to do that. It’s not really a first date if it’s my twentieth with you. It’s not really a fresh slate with Papyrus if I know I upset him. _I don’t want to do that_.”

Sans tapped one finger on the desk of his stand. “and lookin’ at other timelines to figure things out you shouldn’t know?”

“They’re _completely_ different timelines. They’re not me. I can’t see myself, only the others who might’ve come down here instead. It was one or the other if I want to get through this and leave. I’m doing the one that keeps this timeline whole.”

You folded your arms, despite it being extremely warm. Sans adjusted himself on his seat, moving slowly, taking his time. His eyes were half-closed; he seemed tired.

“’s funny. never got to talk about this with anyone.”

“I’ve messed up. I don’t have anybody to help me. The others do. Or, did. I’m not going to go back and try again, this is…” you gestured right in front of you, “this is it. My reality. I fucked up in it, but those are _my_ mistakes, I can’t pretend they never happened, because I’d know. I can’t go back to eating a burger with you knowing that I just… erased the other Sans you ended up being. That would feel like sort of killing you,” you stopped suddenly to swallow, and he was obviously staring now. You didn’t want to get teary but it seemed to be happening anyway and he’d noticed. You’d been holding onto these thoughts for a while. “I can’t do that just to change that you don’t like me. I don’t own the world.”

Sans hopped gently off his chair and came around to your side of the stand. You were trying not to seem too frustrated and hoped for a second he would comfort you, but he just stood at your side, and his smile was small and understanding. He closed his eyes.

“ya still know a lot about everyone they might not want you to know.”

“You don’t really open up to people. You’re smarter than anyone realises,” he knew you knew this. “You hate keeping things from your brother, but you do for his sake. You’ve known about the timelines changing for a while, and you can’t do anything about it. There’s something else you can’t do anything about—“ boned fingers gripped your arm. “You said you’d leave me alive, the next human, whoever it is, all of them. And you do. You do no matter what. Until it stops mattering any more. You don’t know if it’s integrity or apathy.”

“ok.” His voice cuts in, sounding colder than you ever felt in Snowdin. Sans’s eye sockets have blacked out completely. “kid, you can’t know how it feels to have every permutation of yourself read back to you.”

You shrugged, trying not to show your trembling. “Do you have to think of me as the worst version of myself? Because I don’t think that about you. I didn’t ask for this, neither did you. But I can’t help that I know, so why pretend.” He stayed silent. You watched him for a while, unable to feel all that guilty. After all, it was like a weight lifting off your back. “Hey. You know what else? I’m also the legendary fartmaster.”

Laughter spluttered out of him. You’d never seen him so off guard, and when he looked at you his eyesockets were squinting with actual hilarity.

“oh man. why would anyone say something so ridiculously juvenile.”

“Y’know, I have no idea.” You smiled and watched his broad shoulders shudder. His laugh was too deep to hear. It seemed as good a moment as any to be diplomatic. “Look, if it means anything. I’m sorry it has to be like this.”

The skeleton gradually stopped laughing and looked off the side of the platform, apparently very interested in something else.

“did you ever think about tellin’ me? upfront? about this stuff?”

“Yes. Honestly, I was going to, I kept telling myself to do it. But I just… wanted things to stay normal for a little longer. Hang around with you and Papyrus and pretend I didn’t know everything about you and act like I didn’t have to try and find a way out of here. So I kept putting it off. I liked it being, uhm… well, as normal as it _could_ be. I guess it never really was.”

Sans turned, looking straight up at you, his heavy-lidded expression conveying a very minute understanding.

“I’m only doing what I can to try not to die. I’m gonna figure out how we can all get out of here somehow. I don’t want to have to jump back in the timeline. And you came in to save my life back there. I think you want the same thing.”

Silence. You stared him down once more. You had nothing to add, you waited for his response. His eyes were locked on yours until the moment he completely disappeared.

“Sans,” you growled in annoyance. There was nobody around to hear.


	8. Everyone Wants To Kill You Basically

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reason this one took so long is that I started work on a co-written Sans fic! It's been a lot of fun, you can find that on my profile. But I'm back to working on this one as well.

You watched your own hair, bobbing and flashing in front of you on a monitor. Matching your every move.

You wanted to be shocked, even a little bit. But you weren’t. Nothing had properly surprised you in some time.

“I-I-I didn’t set those up _intending_ to focus on you,” said Alphys, shuffling. She had a tendency to pick at her little buck teeth if you didn’t reply. “They were a—a security measure! And o-of course the arrival of a human was so exciting, I just… watched…” You raised an eyebrow at her. “And kept watching…”

“Undyne told me she had security people watching me,” you shrugged.

Alphys looked extremely uncomfortable. She was the only monster you’d met down here besides Toriel who seemed utterly passive in your presence. You’d knocked on her laboratory door only to be ushered inside and treated like some sort of vague celebrity. Truthfully, the friendliness was welcome. Here you were, trapped underground, hearing death threats from everyone you came across. Undyne trusted this yellow lizard woman to point to your position whenever she finished her recon. You’d wandered around Hotland in the sweltering glow of lava, hearing rumours and muttering from everyone – did you hear there was a human spotted? What do you think they look like? What should we do with them? There were huge guards armed with axes at several junctions.

And here was Alphys, somehow embarrassed over using her tracking system to follow you ever since you’d emerged from the Ruins.

“Y-yes. Would you believe… I actually missed your fight with her?” Alphys pulled a pained grimace. “I was waiting for the water for my instant noodles to heat up and I just…”

“You know, that’s kind of a shame?” you were playing this off as best you could. “I miss my big performance and the one I _did_ give, I go and lose half my audience.”

“Ha ha…” she shifted in her bulky lab coat, with no effort in the laugh at all. She clearly didn’t get what she was supposed to laugh at. Then she just stood there, squat and pigeon-toed. Her rough, croaky voice piped up again after a few awkward seconds. “Um, h-how did it go? You must’ve convinced her to be nice to you because humans aren’t all bad, right? That’s why you’re here wearing her old clothes. They’re um… they suit you, by the way.”

She was blushing.

“Uh. Thanks. Um. No, she beat me unconscious because I wouldn’t fight back.”

“Oh. Well, uh! That’s good! Um, good that she d-didn’t kill you, I mean! Aheh… heh…”

More awkward silence. You wondered how long it would take for her to get to the point.

“You know what I need to do, right Alphys? I have to talk with Asgore before I end up killed and have my soul can be taken. I’m nearly there now, right? It can’t be too much further.”

“Oh, um. Yes. See, about that…” she tilted her head so far to one side that her glasses became crooked, and she fidgeted to restore them, a little bespectacled dinosaur. “There’s something I need to tell you. A long time ago, I made a robot named Mettaton.”

You blinked, giving her your attention.

“Originally, I built him to be an entertainment robot. Uh, you know, like a robotic TV star or something.” It’s the ‘or something’ that has you looking suspicious. “Anyway, recently I decided to make him more useful. You know, just some small practical adjustments. Like, um…” she had turned to look away from you, rubbing the crest at the back of her head. “A-a… anti-human… combat features?”

“Alphys—“

“No, no, it’s not, uh! Well, I t-tried to fix that! Once I saw how well you were doing and how hard you were trying, I tried to remove those features! But it... it didn’t work. And now he’s an unstoppable killing machine with a thirst for human blood.”

She finished in a breathless rush.

“Alphys. It’s okay,” you steadied yourself. “I know about Mettaton. I know you told him to pretend he wanted to kill me. It’s an act.”

“What?!” Alphys hunched forwards. “No no, no, no, I—“

You watched her, shaking and stuttering, trembling like a dry leaf you were trying not to step on.

“Hey, don’t worry! I actually _want_ to meet this robot. Can I do that instead of avoiding him?”

“B-b-but,” Alphys was wringing her coat hem in her claws. “I d-don’t understand how you…”

“Oh, he’s… famous! Everybody knows Mettaton. He’s on TV all the time, right? And he’s never done anything anti-hum—“

**_CLANG._ **

“O-oh no…”

**_CLANG._ **

“Is the floor shaking?”

**_CLANG._ **

The wall beside you and Alphys burst open and, instantly, the lab was a mess of chips of plaster, rainbow lights, and confetti.

“Welcome, Beauties and Gentlebeauties!”

Having somewhat prophetic powers didn’t even prepare you for this. Clouds of dust settled around the newly arrived robot, a large calculator on a single wheel whose facial grid blinked and sparkled with intense excitement. His arms, long and tube-like, held an affected, dramatic pose. One of his hands clasped a microphone.

“Are we ready?! Of course not, that’s impossible,” he crooned, voice metallic, but expressively feminine. “There you are! You must be the human I’ve thought so much about killing.”

“Hi, Mettaton.”

You had your eyebrows raised, but otherwise you did your best to look only vaguely amused.

“U-uh, M-Mettaton, we d-don’t actually—“

“Shhh, Alphys, shh! Introductions are being made! And what relationship could be more iconic than that of the hunter and the hunted, the killer-to-be and the soon-to-be-killed? Ah, I’m excited just thinking about it!” He turned on you, wheeling swiftly in a tight circle around where you were standing. “It’s a shame, you know, gorgeous. I’ll hate having to deprive the world of legs like yours.”

And suddenly you were caught off guard. You reminded yourself that your new clothes were baggy and he couldn’t _see_ your legs.

“Mine? What about yours?” you countered. “That’s the kind of turning radius a girl would _die_ for. I’ll have to be _wheely_ careful.”

“Sexy banter! I love it!!” He did another little spin with his hands waving in the air. “The viewers really eat that stuff up!”

Alphys had her head in her hands. She peeked out between her claws. “M-Mettaton! Listen! You don’t…. have to do the killer robot thing. She… she knows it’s fake.”

The robot stopped in his tracks, all his buttons a blank yellow.

“…What?”

“The, uh, the whole thing… you don’t have to do it, it’s, uh…”

“You’re telling me that after all that preparation, after having to learn that entire _awful_ script, after _perfecting_ a tone of murderous intent—“ he trundled up to Alphys, looming over the smaller, squat monster, “suddenly I’m _not necessary_?”

“Uhh well kind of,” Alphys’s face was a toothy grimace. “But I’m sure we can—“

Mettaton’s robotic sigh was the most dramatic huff you’d ever seen. “You can’t possibly understand how a true _artiste_ works, darling. I’m immersed in this role. I can’t just flip a switch and turn it off.”

“W-well, technically—“

“ _I can’t_.”

You hastily interjected. “Come on, Mettaton, it’ll be okay. I’m sure you don’t… really want to kill me.”

“I do, though. I found out about method acting.”

“Oh.”

“And since Alphys is trying to ruin my fun here, I suppose I’ll just have to do this without her and her little… _escapades_. Sorry, darling.”

Alphys looked about to protest, but the robot’s wheel retracted and was replaced by a jet exhaust, firing up and propelling him into the air.

“Toodles!”

He spun out of the labs open skylight and disappeared.

A rather awkward silence descended as the last pieces of confetti fluttered to the floor.

“Well that was… something,” Alphys mumbled. She seemed shaken. Not knowing what else to do, you patted her on the back. “Now he’s… h-he’s really going to…”

“Well, honestly? It seems like he was eager to do things his own way. It was probably going to happen sooner or later.”

“B-but… he’s really going to try and murder you! I know we’re… _supposed_ to take your soul, but I don’t…”

“Forget about Mettaton. He’s got his own agenda. But you just wanted to help, and honestly, I appreciate that. You’re the only person in the Underground I can think of who’d try.”

“Ah…” Alphys padded over to her console. She tapped at the keys, moving the camera feed from its view of your own head to a view of Snowdin. “I-I guess… I’m trying… a-after I watched you living with those skeletons, well, I felt… bad…” With a smooth sequence of pawing and the turn of a knob, the screen fizzled through a time jump and you saw the snowy plateau and bridge outside Snowdin. The seemingly fresh snow was still crisp in your memory. You saw Sans shuffle into view and cross the bridge.

Awkward regret flooded you. Oh no.

“I-it’s not that I mean to pry, but you seemed very happy there with them… and then that day, you had an argument, then a fight… I couldn’t tell why,” Alphys sounded half like a consoling friend, half like a befuddled scientist. She pushed her glasses higher on her snout. “For a while I thought you and the smaller one were gonna.. …you know..”

You turned away, clearing your throat pointedly. “Things happened, and it wasn’t working out, I guess. That’s all—hey. Wait. Do you have these cameras everywhere?”

“Not—well—almost, in places where things might—“

“So you saw? In Waterfall? Sans was following me the whole time, right?”

Alphys sped the video forward on another feed. The picture was grainy and dark, but you saw yourself trudging along, with an uncomfortable and sodden walk. The video sped forward. You passed through a patch of echo flowers. A few more seconds at high speed, and the video paused on Sans, standing in the flowers, looking morose.

“Yeah. I don’t… really know why, but he’s probably checking up on you more than even I can.”

You were thinking, not paying much attention any more, until you saw Alphys staring. Your face was warm. You didn’t want her to get ideas, but you turned from her and rubbed your nose, which wasn’t going to dispel whatever she was thinking.

“Alphys. Serious question. Did you ever notice anything else? Anything strange? Suspicious monsters following me that weren’t Sans?”

“Uhh… not really?” A look of concern crept up as she fumbled her claws together. “Not that I… oh, well, actually. Maybe once or twice, but only a blur. I never thought it was a monster, though. Maybe just a refraction on the lens…”

You stared up at the image, now paused, on the big screen. The echo flowers hovered, mid-bob. They’d be whispering all the things you’d said to them on your way through. Nothing out of the ordinary, except that one of them was the wrong colour.

“Okay. Never mind. Thank you, Alphys.”

“What… for? I-I didn’t do anything. I… I lost control of Mettaton and now he’s going to…”

“It’s okay. Really. I can take him. I handled Undyne, right?”

Alphys seemed entirely unconvinced.

“Well, uhh, I suppose… I think Mettaton won’t bother you for a while. He’ll be off planning some elaborate staging for you. Maybe if you hurry you can get past him before he finishes…”

You nodded, and Alphys told you how to get through to New Home, a route that went through the Core, the engine where all monsterkind’s energy was generated. She was hesitant and bashful and didn’t meet your eye, describing it as a pretty direct route with no problems or obstacles. In fact, the simple nature of the rest of your journey apparently was disappointing to her. You said goodbye and Alphys swapped her console back to a live feed.

The soft murmur of distant magma accompanied you on your way.

 

* * *

 

“What’s the matter, dearie? You aren’t enjoying my hospitality?”

You were caught by the ankle, desperately twisting, and being laughed at by a spider.

“Ahuhuhuhu! Look at you go! Humans are such busy little creatures.”

Things had gone terribly wrong. The trek across Hotland had been completely uneventful, but Alphys hadn’t mentioned that you needed to go through a pit of spider webs owned by a vengeful spider lady.

“I’ve heard a lot about humans. They don’t like spiders. But fortunately for you, I’m being rather generous,” Muffet blinked each of her five eyes at you in turn, doing nothing more than sitting at a dainty table and sipping tea while regular sized spiders trickled in and out of her china cup. “I’m letting you visit, which is quite special, sweetie. And, you know, I think I might introduce you to my pet.”

You squirmed. The webs were stuck to your foot, the rest of your body dangling upside-down. You weren’t trapped, so maybe if you righted yourself…

Muffet snapped the fingers on her right three arms. You heard a nearby roar.

You tried to pull yourself up and grab some of the web. You hadn’t come this far to just get stuck like a mindless fly. With your right hand you attempted to snatch a piece of the webbing – you didn’t know which threads were sticky and which were not. It proved too difficult with one hand. The other held your only possession. Papyrus’s bone.

As you struggled in place, the webbing itself started to move. It was gradually rolling loose from the ceiling, dragging you down to the floor. With a skitter an enormous creature bounded across the partly-webbed tiles underneath you. It was huge, it had massive spider legs, it had a gaping maw lined with gnashing fangs. It was part cupcake.

“Ahuhuhuhu~! Isn’t he a good boy? He’ll like his exotic meal, I’m sure. How special! Who else around can say they’ve eaten human? I’m almost jealous~”

You could hardly move.

Your descent towards the ground wasn’t stopping. The cupcake spider had spotted you, scurrying around with his mouth open. Sometimes tough decisions had to be made in a crisis.

You threw your bone away, at the floor. You heard it clatter, distantly. The ravenous cupcake became distracted, searching to see if his food was nearby. You bent yourself upwards and grabbed the webbing with both hands, steadying yourself, pulling at the thread around your ankle with vicious scrabbles until you freed it.

Clinging to the still-descending web, you breathed, able to think better now that you were the right way up. You realised that your efforts hadn’t helped much.

“Not long now, pet~!” crowed Muffet. She was content to watch your struggle. You couldn’t save yourself against an enemy so large, even if you could manage to retrieve the bone. That cupcake was vicious. Muffet was in no mood to negotiate. And even while you were safe, clinging to a swinging mesh of sticky silk, you couldn’t dodge anything with the athletics that had saved you before.

You were close enough now to see the strange creature’s beady black eyes, glinting. Fixed on you. You needed help. And you’d never been too proud to ask for it. But right now, you’d need something a little stronger than asking.

You swung on the trail of webbing to pull part of it away from the cupcake that wanted to eat you. If it was positioned right, you’d have a fallback plan just in case this went wrong. You slipped, and were left dangling by one hand. Underneath you, you heard teeth chomping and the excited trampling of several feet across the floor.

Now or never.

You let go.

You fought the urge to scream. For the third time, you were plummeting to certain death. Or so it seemed. You had your eye trained on the lower part of the web, ready to reach out, snatch it, save yourself if he didn’t—

Thick, soft arms enveloped your waist. Solid, comforting. You blipped out of existence.

“ _jeez,_ _kid_.”

You were back. Disorientation was easier to shake this time. You had to blink, forcing the world to make sense. The huge spider cupcake, about three times bigger than you’d thought it to be from above, was backed into a corner. Peering meekly and defeatedly at you. Sans stood in front of it, casually as ever, hands in his pockets. He seemed to be staring it down. You couldn’t see his face.

“’ey, muffet.”

“Wh—Sans?!” Muffet got up in a flash from her table, spilling a bundle of smaller spiders on the tablecloth. “What—when did you arrive?”

“just dropped in. no need to look so highly strung.”

“Hmmm. You’d better not be stealing my thunder, little bone,” she trailed the fingers of two hands around on the table. “I caught this human; mine. You had your chance~”

“actually, I’m here to vouch for ‘em,” he drawled, sounding lazy as ever. He kicked one foot back and tapped his toes. “stories of humans being mean to spiders, turns out, are greatly exaggerated.”

Muffet considered him for a moment. She glanced at you, and without breaking the glare, snapped her fingers again. The fiendish-looking cupcake growled, then whined. It was clearly displeased. But it wouldn’t refuse its master, and scurried away into a partially concealed tunnel, vanishing instantly into the deeper webs.

“Very well. Come back for tea sometime, Sans. You deserve it.”

“i’ll pass.”

With a twirl and a few lashings of silk into the darkness of the rest of the room, Muffet was gone.

Sans finally faced you.

He wasn’t smiling; his expression was very hard to read. It looked completely neutral. But you hardly cared. All you felt was gratitude and you had to hold yourself back from hugging him right then and there.

“You saved me again.”

“i guess.”

“I knew it. I knew you didn’t want me to die.”

“heh. high praise.”

“Oh!”

You left him for a moment, rushing to scout around. You almost didn’t see the whiteness of your bone among the webs, but you recovered it, and held it at your side. Instantly you felt more secure.

Sans watched you. “i gotta say, i don’t much appreciate havin’ my hand forced, buddy.”

“I’m sorry. You saw – I was helpless. Thank you. Thank you, Sans. I’m... I’m not…”

He began to grin again, faintly. “hey. pal. slow down. i think we’d better talk. yeah? c’mon.” He gently wrapped his arm around yours. “i know a good place for that kinda thing.”

You relaxed against his touch and followed his lead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is dedicated to the fact I've never beaten Muffet legitimately. I couldn't do it. I had to go with the donut.


	9. sansdate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There was a hiatus of sorts here. Whoops. Sorry.
> 
> As usual, thanks to auntie_diluvian for her proofreading pointers. Hope everybody's ready for some (jazz hands) dialooooogue!

This definitely was not what you’d expected.

Somewhere quiet, secluded, maybe. Sans didn’t just keep secrets, he ran entirely on them by default. You’d assumed he meant a private little nook only he knew about for you to finally have a real chat about everything.

Not this.

You tilted your head back, and back, watching the immense building grow as you approached, Sans’s arm still around yours. A stunted skyscraper doing its best against the enclosure of a cave ceiling, it had nevertheless outdone expectations anyway and been built in the highest cavern the Underground could offer. It was grandiose enough by being such a large structure in an enclosed place, but the warm golden light blaring from the many windows and the short shrubs lining the walls gave it a sense of quaintness, too.

As you neared the glass doors you spotted a worn red carpet and the kind of velvet rope barrier used to hold back crowds. As if you couldn’t tell from the sheer size, this place must be popular.

That sense of recognition you were so used to drew your attention. It gave you an overlay. You matched up with every other journey a human took Underground in other realities, at least every one that made it this far. But Sans was bringing you here personally, so how could it—your frown was interrupted when you read the glinting, golden, curved letters embossed above the entrance, flanked by miniature angel-wing versions of the robot himself.

MTT.

“Sans!” you stopped. “Is Mettaton _here_?”

The skeleton sluggishly followed your stare up to the vanity sign.

“nah, he just owns the place. well, _now_ he does. used t’be som’n’ else. he made a resort out of it, y’know, in his own classy way. hotel, bar, open mic nights.”

Sans’s dismissiveness reassured you. You trusted him well enough to not consider this a lavish trap to drop you in the lap of an egomaniac robot. Was it trust? Or was it that you knew, outstretching your mind across the outer layer of reality, that no human ever found Mettaton here?

Your thought process had deepened so suddenly you didn’t realise you were walking alone. You cast around for Sans and found him a few paces back, not heading in any farther.

“there’s a v.i.p. entrance this way,” he said cheerfully, gesturing to a rather dark and completely nondescript corridor.

He bent into a short bow, by way of a gag, and offered his arm to you. You took it. Both of you walked forward arm in arm, as if you were distinguished guests following a red carpet. The hallway got darker. The tinny elevator music from the entry hall got quieter, until the only clear sound were your footsteps and his, clicking on the tile.

Were you scared? Still, no. Was this trust? You doubted it.

The darkness flickered, you felt like a wash of pins and needles soaked your body, and then your feet were quiet, sinking into thick carpet.

“they say you need a booking five months in advance for a table here,” Sans drawled. He carried on without you. This was the MTT restaurant, it was clear as day. Monsters, mostly in couples, sat filling almost every table in this large, tall, but carefully decorated dining room. A simple candle made each tablecloth a point of illustrious refuge, each monster bending low and chatting in low, polite murmurs. To your left, deep red curtains and a stage with floor lighting, currently bare. A line of ficuses hugged the far wall. Sans took a seat at an empty table. “fortunately, I know a guy.”

“Uh, is that guy… yourself?” Sans just briefly chuckled. Taking the seat across from him, you felt dulled, caught backward, by the radiance of the setting. Your mind was still catching up on the abrupt jump in scenery. The atmosphere, the lighting… a piano was playing somewhere. You didn’t want to think the word ‘romantic’, but you already had.

Sans had his hands clasped on the table. The soft light from the table candle drew shadows across his face’s more angled points, and honestly, it made him look all the more interesting. He rested his cheek on one hand, starting to grin wider.

It dawned on you he was messing with you. You pursed your lips and tried to seem like you were playfully, and not ignorantly, going along with it. Hey, you weren’t that easy to take in, you hadn’t thought this was sincere and you were used to guarding yourself carefully by now. You just hoped he wouldn’t realise how accurate his attempt to fluster you had been, if that’s what this was.

“so,” he finally said something, sounding quite at ease. “this feels like it’d be a good time to fill you in on some things. there’s a lot i could say,” he tilted his head at you, making the shadows swap direction, “but y’know, somehow i feel like i'd be repeating myself.”

“Oh, the door thing?” it came out without thinking and you couldn’t have acted more nonchalant if you’d tried, so it was a good thing you weren’t trying. Sans reacted, for once. The flex in his neck, pulling his chin inward, looked involuntary. His brow twitched. “Sorry. I mean, yeah. It’s a cute story.” On the one hand, you’re finally getting to talk to him. On the other hand you were apparently tempted to effortlessly piss him off so much he would regret giving you the opportunity.

“i don’t think ‘cute’ is really the way i'd tell it.”

“Debatable. And in case you weren’t aware,” you nodded your head towards the room in general, trying to play his game, “it’s not considered polite to spend a whole date talking about another lady.”

Sans reached for a glass and took a sip of water. It really seemed like he was thrown off by that, which on one hand, was payback for trying to throw you off by teleporting. On the other hand, you knew how he hated it when you played up your magical powers and god were you tired of playing this game.

“i don’t even know her name,” Sans said quietly.

You stared at him and took a sip of water too. When he stayed quiet, you looked around at anything else.

A monster was wiggling up to you. They seemed gelatinous, with six wiggling arms and a little white vest around their shoulders. They carried various plates of distinctly odd-looking food, and surprised you by stopping at your table to offer two plates.

“But we didn’t even order,” you said as the waiter monster slid away.

“oh, yeah, they don’t do that here,” Sans was pulling at his food with a fork – some kind of softly folded yellowish mass which resembled an omelette, with something thick and red and gloopy on the inside. “’s a fancy place. they just bring what you want.”

As cryptic as that was, you didn’t feel the need to jab Sans to explain when your own meal looked oddly appealing. It was a tower of something bubbly and pink, with creamy white shavings decorating the top.

Sans still kept his voice low, and also spoke with food in his mouth. “anyway, yeah, i figure you know that story. so how about giving me one?”

“What do you wanna know?”

“how’d you get here?” he could keep his piercingly stark pupils disconcertingly steady on you while he ate, seemingly otherwise at ease. “what even happened? normal human life, i guess, until…”

You sank a little in your seat. “Oh.”

“mm?”

“Yeah. Pretty normal. You mean why I was up on Mt. Ebott?”

“huh?”

“The start of the caves that led in here. You have to get to them by climbing Mt. Ebott, it’s a mountain. My town is just right at the base. It’s a nice area, not too big, not lonely either. So, we’ve always had this superstition about the mountain. We have a lot of old legends like that. It’s said that anyone who tries to climb Mt. Ebott will never return. The mountain can make people… disappear.”

You’d been idly staring at the candle between you and Sans. When you shifted attention to him, you found he’s stopped eating.

“…yeah?”

“I just… well, I never believed it in that much. Maybe a couple of people tried climbing it once and didn’t make it, that’s simple enough, and doesn’t make the whole mountain cursed. I think maybe I might’ve found out how that rumour started.”

“oh. man,” said Sans, blinking. “so… how’d you end up…”

“Trying to get up the mountain?” you sighed and cringed. “…Photography contest.”

“…”

“Yeah. Our local magazine had a contest for a picture of something in town, and the prize was this _really_ nice camera, and it’s always been a bit of a hobby of mine – so I thought, what kind of picture is nobody else going to get?” You rolled your eyes at yourself, talking faster. “Nobody else would’ve climbed Ebott to get a great photo. I went up near sunset. I didn’t even go far, but the low lighting probably didn’t help. Yeah, I know, not the most dramatic way to discover we’ve been living on top of thousands of trapped magic people.”

Sans started to laugh. A deep, throaty sort of wheeze that lifted some of your tension.

“What! I know it’s silly! I literally stumbled on an underworld full of exiled monsters because I wanted a camera.”

“naw, it’s charming, actually,” Sans chuckled, “that’s a great way to do it.”

You smiled back. You could tell he was pleasantly surprised.

“At the very least this turned out to be more exciting than a mail-in competition.”

“did ya at least get a good photo?”

“No. I must’ve lost the camera when I fell, before I even got to a good vantage point. I didn’t have it when I got up.”

“and, uh… did you… the barrier?”

“Yeah. I kind of… felt it? I know I fell through something. Something not physical? I could see this huge cavern widening up as I fell, and I thought, shit, this is it. I’m going to die all over thinking I could prove some old legend wrong. Then something passed by me and I slowed down, like I started going through thicker stuff than air. The landing hardly even hurt.”

Sans nodded. You weren’t sure how much these vague details would mean to him.

“And then it started. I got up, and I thought differently. If I concentrated I could pull back… like having an out-of-body experience? And I saw other people falling just like me. They weren’t me. They all had different reasons, and I knew those, too. If I kept going, I saw more and more and more people. It hurt, gave me a headache. So I stopped, I felt dizzy, and the next thing I know, T-- … uhh, a nice monster lady was there, telling me to stay calm and that she’d take care of me. I followed her. It was weird, being able to see that way, but I had to know what I could do with it - after a while I realised I was seeing the same events in other universes, all with different humans… there was only one me, but everything else had happened before. Or… was happening. And if I looked and saw another human walk over an old crack in the ruins floor and it crumbled and they got hurt… I stayed away from it. That’s how it started.”

Sans looked very pensive, arms folded on the table. He nodded toward you when you stopped, and spoke kindly.

“eat your thing.”

You’d nearly forgotten your meal. Without wondering what it was, you grabbed your fork and scooped some into your face. It tasted familiar, of any homecooked meal you’d ever had, as warm and relaxing as your own welcoming living room.

“’S nice,” you confirmed.

He let you eat quietly for a while, catching up on your bites. Either Sans just couldn’t stay serious while he was eating or he was less bothered than you’d worried he’d be. Eventually, he started posing questions.

“and you _didn’t_ have any magic on the surface?”

“No. Humans don’t, any more. Actually, we don’t know we ever could. It was a surprise when I read those history panels, but I mean, I can totally believe it. Now that I can do this.”

“that’s so weird.”

“Why? You must know how we work up there, so much of our shit drops down here. What we don’t have magic for, we create inventions. We study it and manipulate it.”

“we’re not so different,” Sans said, looking away and cupping his chin in his hand.

“You’ve got our old fridges and computers and bicycles and whatever.”

“yeah, but we also got your old cartoons and comic books,” there was definitely a twinkle in Sans’s eye. “i've never seen one that _didn’t_ have magic. you got flyin’ humans with laser eye beams, you got, uh, the cartoons where the girls have cat ears and take five hours to use magic to change their clothes. there's the video games with your wizards and energy crystals and—“ he’d been talking fast, but slowed down. “you… get the idea.”

You grinned. “You’re into that stuff?”

“uhh. no. well. okay not—not the cat ear girls one—“

“Suuure.”

“i'm—no!”

“Then how’d you know about those?”

“my… someone i know collects them.”

“Uh-huh…”

“they’re considered human history books.”

You spluttered, snorting with laughter before immediately lowering your voice and glancing around with embarrassment. The distant piano sounds continued. Sans ate some more of his food while quirking an eyebrow at you, while you help his gaze and smirked, trying not to let him make you laugh. After a sip of water you went on.

“Our history’s not that adorable. Sadly. What we did to monsters included? It’s some pretty rough stuff.”

“mmm,” Sans sighed, in some kind of agreement and understanding.

“All those things are just… themes? Our creativity keeps looping back to the same thing… giving ourselves inhuman powers, then finding out how to keep them in check. I never thought about it much until now. People don’t know monsters exist. We didn’t pass anything on about you, aside from creatures and stuff… I guess we thought we made it up. And our stories and legends about it just became superstitions, like Ebott.”

“now, it’s not the worst thing you’ve done, but acting like humans _invented_ us?”

“God, I know. I’m sorry. This is so weird to think about. I think we… _miss_ having magic. Maybe those stories appeal to us because we remember the feeling of it, deep down in our minds. We imagine having it back again. …I don’t think we should.”

Sans stared at you, obviously waiting for you to elaborate.

“All the stories in our world about responsibility and how to control powers if you suddenly got them, or using an inhuman state for the better. That wouldn’t happen. Not with people being the way I know they are,” she lowered your voice, “not after what we _did_ to you.”

Sans smiled. You knew by now when his usual settled face actually smiled. You liked it.

“sounds like you trust humans even less than i generally do.”

“You guys have been good to me. Not that I don’t need to go back home, and yeah, I did get attacked a few times, but you know.”

“you can, uh… y’know. see everythin’ that’s goin’ on, everythin’ that we could ever do, and the upshot of all that is… you like us.”

“Guess so.”

“heh. cool.” Sans turned back to his plate, then swiftly back up to you, confusion buckling his brow. “wait, d’you mean… okay, would you say we’re _nicer_ down here t’you than your own kind?”

“Eh. I wouldn’t say so individually. But socially, culturally, there’s a lot more that’s comforting about being down here. Depending on the human, we can be great. Some people would do anything for each other. But not… always.”

Sans hummed in understanding.

“I’m not a saint, but I know it’s best to be kind. Being down here has been refreshing. How do you do it? Monsters are so open and understanding without trying.”

“heh. magic. in a sense, i mean. magic fluctuates. it's our consciousness, so it reacts to our emotions. when we get angry we’re stronger, cuz if we intend to hurt, that’s what our magic does. if we don’t want to fight, we’re literally easier to dust. so i guess things coulda gone one of two ways – either we had to be ready to fight 24/7 and stay angry so’s we wouldn’t get killed immediately, or we could just chill out an’ help each other so nobody’d ever want to. and given everyone’s nature, makes sense we did the second one. i'm glad, too.”

“Yikes. So am I. Sans, does telling me this _bother_ you? I understand if you don’t want me to know—“

He shook his head, then shrugged. “well. not really. ya already know the basics. how a single human is stronger than basically every monster put together. a _kid_ could fall down here and… well…”

“Put up a good fight?”

“they _have_ ,” Sans had been staring at the table and looked at you without lifting his head. Your mouth went dry. “other humans. ….kids. you know we got six souls. they, uh… somewhere along the way, they… got into trouble. casualties on both sides.”

You blinked. This situation was terrible. Maybe it hadn’t dawned on you properly because it was the monster way to try to be optimistic, or to cling to hope and not let despair take hold, and that was the way you’d seen them all. Making the best of it. But underneath it all, they were all down here waiting for humans to come along, by accident, and murder them. You knew already the danger the situation posed to yourself, but the sympathy was new. None of them could possibly want to do this once, let alone seven times. There was nothing else they could do.

“Do I scare you?” You sat back in your chair, folding your cutlery on your plate. Sans looked indecisive, rubbing his jaw. He closed his eyes.

“not exactly. the anomaly scares me. guess i was scared by your li’l quotation stunt, but y’know, shock’s passed. if… if i could do what you can do, that would scare me. i'm, uh, honestly not sure how you handle that.”

“You didn’t see the first week of it in the ruins. I decided not to dwell on the implications after a while and just do whatever it took to look for a way out, and just… acknowledge it and go anyway. But you and Papyrus can make actual bones from nothing, I mean, _that_ is a real power! Mine’s just… seeing something I wasn’t meant to see.”

“maybe it’s your self-preservation trying to normalize this, but it’s really not.” You noticed Sans holding himself a little differently now. Leaning on the table instead of slouching, speaking faster than he normally did. He didn’t sound bored. “the thing is,” he sighed, clearly making an executive decision about voicing this, “i'm pretty sure i know what happens when someone knows how every instant plays out.”

“What’s that?”

“you’re supposed to _deal with_ there being unknowns in the world. ‘s how your mind operates – y’know what you’re presented with, ‘n there’s a hell of a lot you’ll never see. if ya do see it? doesn't feel like reality any more. doesn't fit with the idea of ‘consequences’. y'don’t have to ask any more, y’just know. ya might stop interacting altogether,” he wasn’t looking at you, his voice deep and quiet and nothing like his regular flippant drawl. “why bother, y’know?”

“Has this… _happened_ to someone?”

“i can’t… tell,” Sans scratched his head. “but _something_ ’s been goin’ on. _something_ messed with time itself, kept rewinding over and over. jumping back to certain points. something lived again, and again, and again. what's the world like after that?”

The silence was uneasy. Sans looked a little lost in his own thoughts, and you rubbed your fingertips together. The power he was talking about felt familiar to you.

“and you can do that.”

“…Yes.”

“it just… jeez. it’s so—“ a very faint note of distress caught in his tone, making you sit up in case anything happened. “you could just… go back in time. right now. start the day over. what’d even stop you from doin’ it? and this’d all be gone. i'd…”

“Sans.” The way this was going worried you, You repeated his name and put your hands out on the table, reaching in a reassuring way. “Sans. I _know_. That part is terrifying. When the other power started I realised I could do that too. I can see other timelines and move around in mine. But it’s _terrifying_. I know. I can’t just leave everything I’ve lived in and go backward. I don’t want the memories of things I’ve done with people to be undone? I’d still remember doing it but it never happened – that would eat at me. I can but I _can’t_.”

Sans had been staring, the lights in his eyes quivering and flickering slightly. He deflated down into his seat.

“ok.”

You knew – well, no. You didn’t _know_. You were _assuming_ that was what he wanted to hear from you. But he didn’t look all that convinced.

“not even… going back to get to the surface and never come down here?”

“It doesn’t go back that far. The sight thing, it’s all magic I didn’t have until I fell through the barrier. Starts from that point.”

“ah. _wait_. …..oh.”

“Besides, how could that be better? Up there not able to do anything? Now I’m _here_ at least I can try, because this just… can’t go on. If it wasn’t me, another human would be here, and they might get killed, and then Asgore takes the seven souls and leads the monsters on a revenge mission.”

“he did say that, yeah.”

“No, _he does that_. I can’t… see exactly because it’s too far ahead, and the human I need to see through is dead. But I know he does. And it’s terrible. It’s a war, Sans.”

“i'm… guessin’ we sorta forgot over time how well a fight goes down against a few hundred humans.”

“Billion.”

“what?”

“The number of humans on the world now. It’s in the billions.”

“… holy _fuck_.”

“There’d only be a few thousand near enough to the mountain when you come out and the war starts, but yeah.”

You folded your arms. Sans looked grim. He kneaded his forehead.

“And the existence of monsters and magic, even though the war is a steamroll, causes mass destabilisation up top. Monster acceptance protests, which are pointless by the time they even start. People demanding to know why their magic disappeared. People who want to protect monsters and people who take the threats at face value. They don’t care. You’re extinct. _Soul absorptions_. From boss monsters.”

Sans hid his mouth with his hand.

“I’m having to assume a lot of that, but I’m pretty sure I’m right. My timeline is different. I can see the others but mine… diverges. So far I’m not one of the ones that…”

“…but if you did,” Sans mumbled, “…die… you could go back.”

“Could. I’d rather not. I don’t want to lose anything.”

You realised the piano had stopped. Gentle chatter from the other tables bubbled around you, and you took another drink while Sans sat silently.

“Sorry.”

“mm… no. it’s fine. i probably needed to hear that.”

“Thanks.”

“do I always do this?” Sans asked, starting to seem more cheerful.

“Haha. Yep. Always always,” you nodded down at the table, the silverware, everything. “You tell your story about the door. You ask if what I have to do is really worth it just to get home.”

“hmm.”

“And it’s not, but you know that.”

“right.”

“Well, almost always, but nearly every time. You’re always here. You’re actually the most constant thing out of every timeline.”

“hahaha. welp, that does sound like me. i don’t wanna be thinkin’ up new stuff for every kid that comes through here, y’know? plus i'm a creature of habit.”

You laughed with him, slightly. You were warmed just by having said so much that you’d wanted to say.

“i meant it, though. the part—ok, this is damn weird, just sayin’, i never actually said what i was gonna say, but – the part about it being worth it. what if you… stayed.”

You sat and quietly considered his words as you already had a dozen times before.

“I know. But I can’t just pretend like the entire Underground wouldn’t want to kill me if they knew what I was.”

“you’re doing fine right now…”

“It won’t keep up. Undyne knows, the only reason she hasn’t sent the alarm to the guards yet is she wants to evaluate me, see if maybe I deserve not to die.”

“sometimes it’s better to take what’s given to you, y’know?”

“Give up?”

You watched Sans place his hands on the table, drumming his fingers.

“I don’t feel like giving up just yet.”

“heh. i figured. you wouldn’t have your magic otherwise.”

“Y’know, Sans. You’re very hard to pin down.”

“figuratively, or…?”

“Pff, yeah. Well, I mean. I understand why you’re nervous. People aren’t supposed to be able to see all the ways something can pan out, or know all the reactions they could get out of someone. It’s unnatural. You’re right. I wouldn’t wanna know either. I figured I’d only use it to do what I had to do to stay alive and try to get out of here without having to… use my backup. God, it creeps me out.”

Sans shifted. He didn’t look comfortable, but he was giving you a sympathetic glance as well. His hand went to the back of his neck.

“For what it’s worth, I think I’ve managed to ground myself so far and I still know everyone around me is… real. It helps that my timeline doesn’t follow too closely to most of the others, so there’s stuff I can’t predict too specifically. But yeah, there’s one time when I let it get the better of me.” Sans had gone completely still. You took a deep breath. “I hung around in Snowdin... well, partly because you were so nice to me. But I guess I was just so… curious. I know a little about how every monster I meet might act towards me as a stranger. I looked forward to finding out how exactly things would go when it was me. There weren’t that many surprises. But even after watching so many others like me go through the same thing, I hardly know anything about you.”

The skeleton at the other end of the table ran a hand over his skull.

“Out of everyone in the Underground, I couldn’t tell _anything_ about you – I could actually talk to you like a normal person! I know this sounds weird.”

“i thought… i thought you’d be lookin’ at a hundred different ways for my life to pan out.”

“No. I can see what you did with any human that could be here in my place. You’re so distant. You show up to make jokes. Which is nice, thank you, makes this whole ordeal more pleasant. Aside from spoiling a punchline or two – but hey, sometimes jokes are better the third or fourth time around – you didn’t reveal anything about yourself to any of us in a thousand universes.” You bit your lip, hoping this wouldn’t be the push that drove him away.

Sans shrugged awkwardly. “no offense, but y’know, humans… ‘s not just you.”

“I understand. I haven’t really given you any reason to do that.”

“ehh…” he shuffled on his chair. “i don’t really, uh… look, anyway,” Sans rubbed the bridge over where his nose would be. “what’s, uhh… can’t you just look at what the other humans were doin’ and copy that to get you outta here?”

“Well, no. I know that Mettaton is going to block me from reaching the castle and there’s no way to talk him down. I just can’t get by on that any more. And then when I reach Asgore…”

You paused, closing your eyes, as Sans leaned forward onto the table.

“Everyone’s said that he’s a lovely, understanding guy. I’m sure he is to most of you. He just won’t let me leave. I’m the last soul you guys need to bring the barrier down. And, Sans, if I really were standing in the way of you guys being free, and I just had to die to save you, like Undyne wanted… hell, I’d think about it. Just me against all of this? If me giving up could bring about something great, I guess it’s a rare chance to be a big damn hero.”

Sans kept a measured gaze held with yours. He seemed a little worried. This thought had crossed your mind so often by now you’d forgotten how it might sound.

“But I just… I can’t see properly, but there’s hints and echoes of what would happen. Magic is intention and the intention is so, so strong. If Asgore took my soul, he’d have to keep up his promise to lead the monsters to war on the surface. And then everything, _everything_ ends. They don’t want to, they’d kinda… be indecisive, even Undyne might have an open mind. But humans would take one look at an army and…”

By the way Sans stared down at his cutlery, you surmised he got the picture.

“you said mettaton was up first, though. what’s his deal?”

“He doesn’t want me to talk to Asgore either. He thinks we’ll fight, and I’ll lose, and the whole war will start. He only opposes it because he wants humans to be his biggest audience.”

“of course.”

“But, god, I just don’t know if I can do this. I don’t want to die. He is more or less a killer robot.”

“hey, but… you’ve been okay until now on your own. ya even doused undyne enough to get her to listen to ya.”

“ _Okay?_ ” your hands rubbed over your face as you took a deep breath. “Sans. I haven’t had anyone I could talk to about suddenly getting magical powers. I fucked up friendship with you and your brother, and I miss him. I’ve barely survived and I’m surrounded by monsters who only aren’t capturing me because they don’t realise what I am. And I was so desperate when Muffet caught me that I almost jumped to my death… I’m really, really not okay.”

Sans sat in silence, looking at you. Your voice had quavered, and your fingernails scraped at the tablecloth. You hoped what you could see in his wide eyes was sympathy. Hell, you’d take pity.

“i’m sorry,” and your heart sank, “i'm… this shouldn’t be happening to you.”

“Not your fault… I’m sorry I didn’t tell you up front about what I was doing.”

“no, i get why that was hard to just come out with… i guess i’m glad you liked us enough to not wanna throw that away…”

“It was hard to tell what was normal any more. It’s very different down here from the place I live in.”

“yeah. good or bad?”

Sans was shuffling his fancy napkin around and getting up from his chair. You prepared to follow suit.

“If I wasn’t _stuck_ down here, I’m sure I’d like it a lot…”

“well, like i said. you could forget about there bein’ something else. just come back to snowdin and chill…”

As he put his hands in his pockets you rose and then bent down at his side, one arm around his shoulders, painting an imaginary picture for him.

“Down here doesn’t have stars that fade in as the sky changes colour, shimmering through the layers of our atmosphere. Making patterns to our eyes, even though they’re unimaginably far apart.”

You watched a change roll over the skeleton you hovered next to. From looking down he slowly raised his head, staring into the middle distance. Awe etched into the widening of his eyes and dilated pupils, he even looked younger than usual.

“cute,” he muttered, dismissively, and trotted with his usual easy gait over to the restaurant entrance you’d seen before from outside.

“Hey, hey,” you caught up with a few hasty strides. “Don’t we need to pay?”

“here? kid, this is fancytown. ya pay up front when ya make your ‘reservation’.” He looked back to you and winked.

“Oh, your treat, huh? Was all this really necessary? Not that it wasn’t fun…”

“thought it might be good to have our chat privately. like i said. no getting’ in there without a reservation.”

You stopped.

“Wait, you think,” Sans paused, and backtracked so you could keep your voice low. “You’re worried something was following us…?”

He sighed. “kid. i don’t wanna _worry_ you. maybe i just know how to take precautions. but. what’s bothering me,” he cupped his segmented fingers to his cheek, drumming them in thought, “is that something out there once had the power to time jump. timelines all over the place, stopping and starting. got more frequent, probably because everything felt less real the more it went on. trying to get… a particular result, i guess.” You couldn’t hear the low murmur of polite conversation around you any more. Bellhops near the door were preparing to see you out. “and then a few weeks back. it stopped. that’s… when you showed up. and you can do it to. so if you’re the one _in control_ now… who’d you take it away from. and d’they know it was you?”

Sans waited for two seconds, put his hands back in his pockets, and left you.

Didn’t want to worry you, huh.

Frowning and confused, you followed him out just by walking with him ahead in your field of vision. You weren’t paying attention. Someone else had previously ‘owned’ your powers, and since nothing had rewound since you’d fallen down, that indicated they had lost them when they’d come to you. Why? And how did Sans know all of that? Everybody you’d met Underground seemed like a perfectly normal person unaware that the fabric of reality could be subjected to anyone’s will. How could a former time-jumper be playing it _that_ cool, how could it be someone you might have already met?

When you’d let slip something you weren’t supposed to know in front of Sans, he’d assumed you were the one who’d been doing it. You remembered him ranting about losing sleep during that unexpectedly fiery confrontation. So he knew, he thought you were the reason, he thought you had been manipulating time indiscriminately to suit your whims. You weren’t just someone who could reverse the world, undoing the progress of everyone around you, he thought, without having any other suspect, that you’d already been doing it. Repeatedly.

Water splashed in your face.

You’d wandered into a stream of water jetting at an angle from a fountain. Glancing around, it turned out you’d walked in total distraction back to the lobby. The fountain itself was a garish replica of Mettaton, spewing water far enough out of the basin to soak passers-by.

Trying to shake that off, you caught sight of Sans at the reception and hurried back to him.

You’d had no idea how this was affecting him and why he reacted as angrily as he did. He’d let slip that it bothered him. How deeply did it get to him that Sans, who normally held himself as completely unaffected, actually told you the very idea of it gave him trouble sleeping?

You weren’t sure what to say when you reached him, but he didn’t wait for you to speak.

“here,” he turned from the receptionist, who was a very smartly dressed giant hand, and dangled a tiny key up at you. “you should stay the night. no matter what, guess you’d better be rested tomorrow.”

“Oh!” you’d gotten quite used to not tracking time any more, but after everything today, you were exhausted like nothing else. The idea of having a fancy hotel room – a real bed – pushed your empathy for Sans into gratitude. “Thank you…”

“’s ok.”

He hadn’t paid for the dinner, but the key in his hand was bought legit, right from the front of house. You took it. After all that, he’d faked you out again and done something generous you hadn’t expected of him after his pretences.

“Is this for, uhh…” you bounced the key in your palm, “both of us…?”

Sans stared up at you.

You hadn’t been thinking about the way that would sound. It was like all of this faux-familiar evening had led up to you asking if he intended to crash here, and wording it in the worst possible way.

“i, uh, i have a house, so…”

He trailed off. Awkward silence.

Damn it.

“I mean. No, yeah, of course. I mean, before you go. About tomorrow…”

Sans started walking away, towards the doors to the hotel wing. Yet again, you followed, waiting for an answer to get you through the night, and very aware that if he wanted to instantly leave you couldn’t stop him.

With enough distance around you, away from the other groups of monsters heading to their rooms, Sans stopped to give you an answer. You inwardly prayed you’d made enough of a case with your explanation tonight for him to take your side.

“whatever happens…” he said, “this is.. gonna be on tv isn’t it.”

“Oh. Yeah. It’s kind of a big deal.”

“yeah, i see it already. ‘killing a human – the mettaton special’, in fancy writing.”

“See? We’re not all that different.”

Sans snorted and laughed.

“hahah. once papyrus finds out about it he’ll vibrate through the couch. so ‘s not like i can hide from it at home. nah, i'll, uh… i'll do somethin’… i'll be here.”

You could have hugged him. You forced yourself not to look as relieved as you felt, or to try to make him promise it. That was enough. He took these things seriously. He would never back out after agreeing.

“Thank you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Sans inclined his head, closed his eyes, and offered a lax salute with one hand. Then with no hesitation, he disappeared. It was so smooth and casual, nobody around would have noticed a thing.

You found your hotel room, fatigue draining you as you opened the door and saw a real, comfy bed. You felt more at ease than you had in so long. You needed his help. He’d listened to you. He was talking to you again.

You crawled into bed and relaxed.


	10. Can You Really Call This A Disco? I Got Kicked In The Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I originally came up with the idea of this fic, this fight sequence was one of the first things that I really wanted to do. I'm pretty glad I finally got it written down at all, actually

“Lights! …Lights!” The high-strung inorganic tone squealed. “No, no, it’s pink _first_ , then white! Are you following your script beats or do I need to have your entire family fired from whatever far less important jobs they have?”

The robot, wheeling about on top of an enormous pillar, was ignored by the flocks of busy monsters rushing on and off the stage, pulling wires, confirming cues, and rigging equipment to the ceiling.

“Do you not understand?? We’re going to have a real _human_ captured and subdued live! Frankly this is the highlight of my career, so I dread to think what it means for yours.”

No monster was near him for long enough to hear him complete a sentence, but he carried on regardless.

“I want the camera team broadcasting alerts for every subsection of the Core the human gets through. This has to be perfect before they arrive so that I can introduce them properly! And then kill them!!”

* * *

 

This felt like the eleventh room you’d been in with an elaborate pattern of security lasers. Carefully, you examined all the angles and arrangements, judging the criss-cross of deadly beams segmenting the air over a conveyor belt.

You prepared to move. The lasers all shut down as one, dimming the room, and the conveyor belt stopped.

You walked along the belt and into the corridor ahead.

Every room had been like this. You assumed these were more puzzles designed to deter people who wanted to casually walk into this enormous hub of energy generation, but every so often the power would just cut out and allow you through. You weren’t going to complain, as it let you dwell on other things instead of bothering with any puzzles.

Keeping yourself alive up against a killer robot was one concern. How and when Sans would decide to meet you was another. The only object you still had to your name was the single bone Papyrus had formed and left you with, which stayed balanced in your hand, gripped with natural ease from how long you’d been walking with it since you left Snowdin.

The Core was a maze. Rooms connected to corridors in random directions and Hotland’s signature conveyor belts sometimes forced you in only one direction, though with the puzzles powering down it clearly was less challenging than it should be. You had a lot of questions, and so far, no-one around to ask them to.

You walked along another mechanised belt and wobbled as the rubber jolted to life. You stood still, warily balanced, but no traps powered up as the strip carried you quickly towards the other end of the room. And there, with no other option, stood a doorway with an insignia around it, purple and red. If it was important, it must be connected with the castle.

You breathed deep, approaching it without hesitation. As nervous as you were, you had faith that Sans would turn this around, making a near impossible confrontation into something merely challenging. You could figure it out. A tingle of determination ran to your fingertips, a sensation you hadn’t felt in so long…

You stepped through.

“Welcome, Beauties and Gentlebeauties—“ boomed a metallic voice, “to the final showdown!”

Yeah, you’d expected him to go all out. Lights cracked on around the edge of a circular room, then spotlights on the centre. With a double-take you realised that you’d already arrived on the platform and the walkway behind you had retracted. An enormous cheer resounded in the room, played up by Mettaton waving and gesturing to the audience.

The audience. In a pit around the edge of this stage stood a hundred monsters, no, three hundred, maybe more – they defied a headcount, with the varied forms of their bodies and sizes. You swallowed. Not that you really had stage fright, but it was unnerving that these people who said you’d trusted would be here expecting you to die. But they were swept up, innocently enough, in the flashy showbiz of Mettaton’s show. The robot wheeled around with unnecessary flourish and splayed his arms wide.

“Welcome, human! Thanks for joining us today! Everyone’s _very_ excited about you.”

You stood firm and glared. Someone who’d caused you this much anxiety didn’t deserve to be played along with. Your fingers drummed and rubbed on the bone in your hand for the reassurance it offered with its familiar grooves and rough texture.

“I’m sure you’re _just_ as excited too. Let’s hear it for the seventh human, everybody!”

The roar of the crowd weighed on you like your soul was sinking. You wished they were cheering for you, but they might as well be applauding the use of your soul for themselves. You couldn’t hide any more – there you were, revealed to them all as a human and a target. The thought occurred to you to search the crowd for Sans, but there was no point with so many of them.

“You know, to be honest,” said Mettaton, in his electronic yet crowd-pleasing tone, “it’s been very freeing that I didn’t have to go along with Alphys’s little ploy. No offense, but it wasn’t the most consistent script I’ve ever starred in. She’s had far brighter ideas than that. Like me!”

You kept glancing behind you at the dozens of faces fixed on you. The staging was carefully planned, and felt more like an ambush designed to unnerve you than a proper performance. There would be no point trying to dissuade the robot from his agenda, not when he’d gone through so much trouble to set up this elaborate arena.

“C’mon, Mettaton,” you said. “All I want to do is talk to the King. Isn’t this really his business?”

“Oh, honey. If the final soul gets anywhere near the guy, he’ll have you gored as fast as you can blink. He’s waited so long. And if he leads the Royal Guard off to war with humanity – well, we can’t have that. Don’t you agree?”

You gritted your teeth. “Sure.”

“Far better that _I_ get your soul instead. See, I really have everybody’s best interests at heart… I’m no killer robot, I’m going to _save_ humanity from a regrettable fate! …By killing _you_!”

“Don’t you know how powerful humans can be?” you countered. “If I wanted to hurt Asgore, I certainly could.”

“ _Really_ ,” Mettaton drenched himself in the word. “Look at you, pumpkin. I’ve seen you fight. You’ve never tried to harm a fly. I don’t think that’s _suddenly_ going to change.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Ooh, look at this smack talk! Are you getting this?” he gestured excitedly to the cameras, his grid-button face pulsating with patterns. “This is going to be my most popular programme ever! Drama, romance, bloodshed!”

You were growing impatient with his smug camera swooning. “You won’t take my soul,” you felt the intention to fight back, defend yourself, rising in your core. With every second you physically felt stronger. “And neither will Asgore.”

Mettaton laughed. “Prove it. I almost didn’t want to point it out, but here I am with a little thing called a _budget_. Ooh!” He feigned a swoon, the back of one hand flopped on the top of his grid. “Let’s take a look at what _I_ can do! Because I’ve got a lot of bombs.”

You had taken a wider stance, shifting your weight quickly from foot to foot. All Mettaton did was raise his arms and a burst of something appeared overhead – something was floating down toward you – a handful of tiny Mettaton figures, each with the miniature wing motif you’d seen on his hotel sign. Attacking you with tiny versions of himself? Of course. Just as wary of them as the real thing, you backed away as they neared you, and once they neared the floor each mini-Mettaton exploded in a mini-boom. Small enough to avoid, you kept your eyes upward, avoiding each one, and were unable to reach a clear area near the end of the assault. Instead, you clobbered the tiny robot with your bone so that it careened off and exploded on the wall below the stands.

You took a deep breath, knowing that had been his warm-up. You noticed only now that music had started to play. It was a bouncy, fast beat, which you tried to ignore but knew it might make both your and your opponents movements more timely and easier to block. Mettaton was already moving around, as the ground lit up in a glowing grid that resembled what could be construed as his face.

“How graceful! Elegant! I know you like to dance, darling, so let’s dance.”

He moved closer to you, and you immediately checked the motion of his wheel – he rolled over the yellow tiles, but was away before they turned red. Throwing yourself into movement you copied him, twirling around and avoiding Mettaton like a flashy game of Twister.

“Look at you go! And all with no magic. Humans really are an audience that deserve me!”

All your effort was in trying to regain a flow of movement and stop stumbling as you avoided the red tiles. Just when you thought you had it, the floor blanked out completely. You looked up to scout for the robot’s next move and instead found him with his hands on his calculator-hips, facing centre stage. You did a double-take. Sans.

He seemed as casual as could be, hands in his pockets, lax, drooping shoulders, even though every eye and camera was on him.

“ _Who_ in the heck are you?”

“sans. sans the skeleton.”

“I actually don’t care, I’m just buying time for security to get here.”

“what, no handshake?”

You couldn’t help the deeply relieved grin that met Sans’s glance as he turned to you. You hurried to him, a little out of breath, slapping one hand on his opposite shoulder.

“No need. He’s with me.”

“Oh, really? I suppose I can’t say I didn’t see it coming, given your weapon of choice. I’m disappointed, darling, I was hoping we’d be keeping this between us.”

“deal with it,” Sans chirped brightly. He settled his feet slightly farther apart, holding a stance similar to yours but for his hands being still tucked away.

“So we’re going to be serious. No problem! Thankfully I still have the biggest surprise of all ready to go. Are you ready?” The audience were enraptured. Some stared at Mettaton agape, others whispered to their neighbours about what he could possibly mean. You already knew, but you let him waffle on. “I have a brand new upgraded form to debut, perfectly timed for my dramatic final exit into the human world! Get ready, beauties~”

A plume of smoke showered the enigmatic rectangle, and you couldn’t tell if it was a special effect or coming directly from him. Clangs of metal resounded while your vision was obscured.

“Ohhh yes!”

Out of the cloud struck a single perfectly sculpted black leg, drawing a gasp from the crowd before hitting the floor with an immaculate _crack_. Mettaton stepped out. He was a synthetic facsimile of a human – tall, covered in bolts and seams, thick shiny black hair falling across his face.

“This was going to be revealed as the closest thing to a real living human among monsters,” he said, his voice slightly silkier than before, with more effort to be charming. He drew a hand up one arm, inspecting himself. He had no clothes, but edges on his shoulders and knees to imply it, everything painted pink and black. At his waist he had a glowing jar embedded in his torso, inside which floated a bright pink heart.

A soul, you supposed. You had to wonder if some of his audience’s excited clamour was due to shamelessly having a soul on display – it would be a very Mettaton way to show off.

“Unfortunately, I can’t be the most human-like being in the Underground with _you_ here,” he continued while inspecting his hand. “But then again, I don’t intend to be here for long, and my new body will be ideal for charming the pants off humanity.”

You wondered why he’d stopped talking and stayed put until you noticed another bomb drop coming down from above. You swept to the side, more assertive this time. Several of the tiny calculators that bobbed close to you were thunked away like you were in the world’s most volatile game of baseball. There were fewer for you to avoid as Sans had half directed at him – when you looked he wasn’t there, and once the scattered bombs had landed he was suddenly back again. He still hadn’t removed his hands from his jacket pockets.

“What are you _doing_ ,” the robot groaned, and was bearing down on Sans in a flash. You gasped at how fast his body moved, kicking a sharp leg at Sans’s body, which missed. He was slightly out of reach. Mettaton kicked again, and you could sense the power behind the blow from his shapely thighs. Mettaton was fighting with style, landing each failed kick back on the ground beautifully. He drew up to his full height, batting Sans away and targeting you instead.

The first kick kneed you in your side. You were a little taken by surprise at the speed, left gasping as the crowd cooed with interest. But the second leg hit your raised bone, and the third was deflected the same way.

“Get up, darling! Oh, please, I know you’ve got more finesse than that!”

He offered his white-gloved hand and plucked you upward so you settled on your feet. With the same motion you were tipped back, dipped with Mettaton’s sturdy metal arm under your waist.

“There we go~”

You heard another bomb go off on the stage. You were brought back up in the robot’s arms and he began to ballroom step through the minefield, forcing you to follow his lead to remain unscathed. Judging by his grin, which you saw up close as you were held against his body during a tight turn, he thought he was proving something.

The moment the explosions ceased Sans appeared again, knee-deep in leftover smoke. He had his pupils fixed on you – you or Mettaton, you couldn’t tell – and he tilted his smile towards you with an odd tug of his head. As he did the stage broke into pieces under your feet. Piercing the air were a multitude of bones, and Mettaton let you go in shock – the row of femurs caused a fence-like barrier between you and your former dance partner.

You couldn’t help smirking.

“Well, so you _can_ do more than just stand there,” Mettaton said, tone cool, tossing his pristine hair back into place. He was more thrown off than you’d ever seen him, and you took the opportunity to lash out, striking at those weaponised legs with the bone you held.

He tumbled to the ground with a rather lewd cry.

To your left Sans chuckled, stopping with you just to watch the robot get up after losing his composure. To your surprise Mettaton reached around your shoulder, pulling you in and bumping his hip against you. The two of you turned aside from Sans.

“I don’t know _what_ you’re doing in company like _that_. Flashy… bone magic? Please. As a human you’re one of the most important people in the underground, right up there with me! You should’ve been _pampered_. I bet nobody’s ever shown you what _real_ magic can do. Want to get to know a star, sweetheart?”

He was guiding you towards the edge of the platform, more easily shown off to the stands. You felt his hand shift up your arm to brush your neck. You weren’t sure what he was doing. He was taller than you now, imposing and impressive, wearing a naughty smirk. He pressed his fingers to his torso where the bubbly container was set into his body, and made a slight catching motion as he drew his hand away. The stage became bathed in pink.

The reaction from the crowd was intense. Screams of adoration, incoherent yelling of disbelief. A soft-looking heart pulsed in front of you, guided by Mettaton’s hand. His life force, his very being. His cotton candy televised soul.

“This is _just_ for you,” he said, “and I want everyone to know it.”

You stared, because it was blindingly beautiful. Turning aside, you wanted help – you didn’t have any cultural context for this, and you knew you were missing something.

“How about we see whether our colours complement each other?” he continued, extending his gloved hand to the middle of your chest.

Before you could respond, Mettaton took the heel of a bone to the face.

You snapped up to find Sans in midair, one hand now extended, forming bone after bone above him and slamming them downward even as he fell. You jumped back, away from the platform’s edge. The bones skewered the ground and shattered, fragmenting the tile.

“ _Ow!_ ”

Some of the bones plunged through and held in an erratic spray which cut Mettaton off from you. Hurriedly, the robot removed his soul from view and the canister in his waist glowed again, soul bobbing safely within it. Mettaton turned side to side, searching for the interruption and not finding it.

You were backing away. Sans came into view in front of you.

“ _dude_.”

Mettaton snapped eyes on the far shorter man, immediately clapping his hands to cue a new bombfall.

“she didn’t even answer you.”

You couldn’t see how he did it. None of the bombs were aimed at you, and you watched while Sans seemed to ignore them completely, walking and curving around the explosions as if they weren’t there. Or as if _he_ weren’t there. Mettaton was losing his impish smile, looking more haggard and unable to keep his hair in place. He remained graceful though, and never stopped moving for a moment. As a dancer yourself, it was hard not to let the snappy beat playing for the ‘performance’ influence you.

Sans disappeared.

Mettaton lashed out at you instead, and you took a blow to your side. You wheezed, righting yourself, trying to keep your distance from him.

“What do you even want to do with my soul?”

“Not let it get anywhere near the King, darling, that’s for sure.”

“Really? You think you’d be able to keep a real human soul all to yourself?”

“Oh, please. I didn’t think at this point you’d be brazen enough to underestimate me!”

“Well, hang on. I don’t mean you. Aren’t _you_ underestimating your audience?”

He stopped, holding back from approaching you. Hope grew that you might be able to distract him, as he seemed to wait for clarification.

“This is on television, dude. You can’t broadcast yourself taking the final human soul and then keep it. With all these people watching? All on the edge of their seats for starting the war against humanity?” You would have expected a real robot would have utmost control over his expressions, unable to be flustered if they willed it. Mettaton was starting to frown. “They’re all hyped to hell and back, but it’s not for your show.”

For a second you thought you were about to take a full-force blow, but suddenly the spotlights shut off and Mettaton disappeared into darkness You could hardly see the audience, though of course they still cheered. Lights in various stark colours beamed along the edge of the stage and along the stalls; orange, purple, red, green. They pulsed on beat with the music, and something shimmering and bright descended into view overhead. A disco ball, casting splashes of light on a slow spin around the arena.

It made you feel dizzy. And, to be honest, you couldn’t help being impressed that the monsters had somehow scavenged an intact disco ball of all things out of human refuse.

“Can you dance your way out of this?” said Mettaton, smug as anything now that you were apparently alone. A white beam shot at the disco ball and reflected, scattering into three beams that fired back onto you like lasers.

Back and side to side, you leapt around them. Mettaton did it again. And again. You couldn’t tell how many beams would reflect at you, you just kept your eyes steady and let your reflexes do their own thing. It actually wasn’t as tough as it seemed and you hopped around, over, and below the lasers with ease, putting some flair in your step. As you avoided more and more in a row, the crowd went wild – cheering just for you this time.

Your concentration fractured as a different kind of light burst on the stage – Sans reappeared, making you stumble. But as you righted yourself, the disco ball retracted and the main lights came back on.

“what’d i miss?”

“Disco.”

“heh. sorry ‘bout that, had to check on papyrus.”

Mettaton stomped elegantly towards you, looking disdainful. And also a little frustrated. His hands were balled up.

“How’s he doing, he’s watching, yeah?”

“oh yup,” Sans laughed just remembering it - an actual full, warm, throaty sound. “yeah, he’s goin’ nuts all right.”

“Am I interrupting something?” Mettaton glared, tapping his foot in time with his music.

“where were we?”

“I _think_ we were about to best a robot at a dance competition.”

“oh yeah.”

“Ex _cuse_ me??”

Not willing to be ignored another second, your glowering adversary simply pointed at you and his finger pulsed with electricity. Sans caught your attention by striking out his hand to you, which you grabbed, and you were pulled over to him and clear of the arc the lightning bolt made. Sans didn’t stop there, letting you stretch to the length of his arm before tugging you with a turn. He hadn’t moved himself, but your muscle memory for ballroom routine took control. He looked perfectly content to watch you. With Sans giving you tugs in the right direction, you bent and turned out of the way of every one of Mettaton’s electric blasts without even looking.

You were growing tired, however, and swung to a stop against your skeletal buddy, who grinned up at you. Despite not moving, you now noticed he himself seemed rather drained, clammy and warm with a weary smile.

Mettaton fell to his knees.

“running low on juice there, sparky?”

“Ab—absolutely not?! How—how—“ the robot’s words were interspersed with bursts of static. “How could I _not_ keep up with the likes of you?”

He stood up. His hairstyle was in full disarray, slightly ragged as though it had been electrocuted.

Sans pulled on your arm. He gestured to you and then upwards, where you saw a fresh group of mini Mettatons start to descend on you. You nodded.

Mettaton struck a pose, pointing at you as if personally conducting the falling bombs. As he watched, Sans raised his arm and he lost sight of the human completely. Exasperated, he turned around expecting to block an attack and found nothing. The bombs shook the stage, his specialty attack making further indents on his platform, and he turned back to see Sans, unharmed.

“Where-“

Sans, arm still held high, splayed his fingers out and released his magic that held you in the air. You fell from your position slightly above your prancing host, falling with your bone clasped over your head, speeding up until you cracked it down on his back as you collided with him.

Metal clunked and crashed to the ground.

Sans gave you a thumbs up.

You scrambled up. Exhilarated and messy, you leaned on the sturdy skeleton’s shoulder as he leaned into you back. Propping each other up, you watched a small chaos envelop the room. Monsters in the stands were, by turn, excited, distraught, angry or just shouting and hooting. Some stage lights were turned out, some stayed on, and attendants rushed back and forth and extended the bridge to the stage once again.

A new, familiar figure bustled across the bridge and huddled by the robot you’d just wasted. Alphys. You saw the crown of her yellow head bobbing behind her lab coat as she inspected and fussed over her creation.

“Please. Please, Alphys, it’s all right, you know me,” you heard Mettaton’s slightly subdued voice, reassuring her.

“Oh, oh g-god, I-I just…”

“As long as you can fix me, darling, I’m right as rain.”

“K-keep quiet, you don’t need to drain your batteries. Oh, that was s-so hard to watch…”

“It was worth it,” the robot sounded quite breathless. “What a show! There’s never been anything like it..! The human, where is she?”

You hesitated, but stepped towards him, sheepishly.

“Thank you. I never could have dreamed we’d pull off something like that. The drama! The twists! It was foolish of me to think I could have kept a soul so strong for myself. You were right,” he chuckled. “My fans wouldn’t have stood for it. But now? Well, I think you might actually be able to show Mr Fluffybuns a thing or two.”

Kind words, from someone who had given you so much anxiety prior to this, was something you weren’t sure how to handle.

“hey. uh.”

Alphys turned for Sans’s voice. She rubbed at her snout, slightly teary around the eyes.

“Oh, y… yes, hi. Hello.”

“sorry about doin’ all that to your bot.”

“Yeah, sorry, Alphys,” you said.

“He w-wouldn’t listen to me… hmph. It’s… he’ll be okay. We’ll be okay.”

“You sure?”

“I…. hope so.”

You wished you had better words for Alphys, since she never asked for this kind of stress much as you hadn’t either. But she was the one with the skill to evaluate Mettaton’s condition, not you, and you had nothing else you could say. You watched, as the audience jumped and crowed all around, watching the forlorn little lizard hunch over her friend.

“um… c’mon.”

Sans was at your side, glancing up.

“kinda had enough for one day, y’know? i could go for some privacy.”

Once you tried to walk, you found your legs pathetically unstable. You were out of breath, dirty, and you wanted to collapse. You only had to cross the bridge over that bright crevasse around the stage, staring straight ahead of you, powered by determination ‘til the very last when you stumbled and had to kneel on the floor, away from the spotlights and attention of the crowd and cameras.

You felt Sans’s hand on your back, and your body became fuzzy.

A soothing sense of relief caught hold even before you’d fully reappeared. You were not surprised to blink and find yourself back in the hotel room you’d used last night at the MTT hotel. Sans staggered back, groaning.

“ohhh boy. i think i done too many of those…”

You hadn’t really considered yourself a glory seeker. You took dancing lessons for pleasure, not attention. But you felt super good about Mettaton’s plan backfiring, showing himself getting wrecked on live TV.

“man am i gonna get some calling-out tomorrow. ‘hey sans, where were you keeping all THAT this whole time’…”

“Worth it though?”

“heheh. possibly.”

You wandered to your bed. It looked very inviting right now.

“Hey, nobody’s gonna mess with you ever again. Or even think about it. Nobody’ll call you lazy, either.”

“oh no, believe me, certain persons are gonna call me even lazier, if i could do that the whole time and never bothered.”

Glancing over to him with affection, you realised he wasn’t moving, just swaying on the spot. Backtracking, you caught him with your outstretched palms before he toppled over.

“Hey. Someone’s tired.”

“i'm good, i’m…” Sans’s sockets seemed deeply sunk and he wasn’t focusing on anything, just blinking slowly out of sync. “uhhh… actually, you think i could use your bathroom to clean off?”

“Yeah… go for it. You did pay for this room and all.”

He had a good point. You felt like a pink monster truck had run you over, leaving you battered and covered in tyre tracks. Just as your energetic stage moves had worn you out, so had Sans’s magic depleted him to exhaustion, though you couldn’t even tell how much magic he’d burned through and why. He’d definitely been displacing himself constantly, which seemed like a big deal - you’d noticed after popping into the room that he had a noticeable sheen of sweat on him. He toddled into the adjacent room and the patter of a shower started up.

You stretched out to ease your tension and lay back on the bed. It really was hard not to get a kick out of all this, and ride some elation at how your route to the final confrontation was clear. All you needed to do was to avoid detection by monsters who all now knew what you were but were likely to have second thoughts about stopping you, walk into the castle, and talk Asgore out of his choices based on rage and heartbreak. Not easy, but since it relied on your wits rather than your strength, it didn’t feel half as daunting. Asgore was a good soul. He would listen.

You hoped.

There was something you couldn’t see about your future now. Finding a way to appeal to Asgore was every human’s goal - all they attempted to achieve while navigating the Underground undetected. A few number of them completed that journey. You’d watched them, in their grouped lifelines of souls, greying out one by one but multitudes of them persevering. And once they got there?

Those worlds went black before your metaphorical eyes. Nothing for you to intuit. After feeling out these universe trajectories so naturally, the sensation of blindness was mostly annoying. You didn’t know why you suddenly would lose the sight at that point, in each of those timelines, but in your hopeful soul you wanted it to mean freedom, finally, and an encouraging proof that what seemed impossible could be done. You intended to ask Sans about it, whenever you were both ready for that.

Coming out of those thoughts, all you wanted to do was lie down and rest and listen to Sans’s shower, that comfortingly close sound of running water. Your brow twitched. Wait, didn’t Sans have his own shower at home?

As soon as that thought crossed your mind, the bathroom door kicked open and Sans swaggered out. He was dripping wet, naked apart from the pink towel around his waist. A dainty shower cap clung to his skull, and he held a trombone to his mouth, blasting out _The Stripper_.

You completely lost it. Not even the brassy honking could mask how hard you were laughing, curling up helplessly on the bed. Every time you attempted to look up, Sans rounded on you and kept on walking stupidly in circles, really giving the music a ton of conviction that defied his complete lack of lungs. You thought the giggles were subsiding, but then Sans waggled his eyebrows at you and you had to cover your face.

“Hey—hey!” you gasped for breath, yelling over the trombone. “Hey shhh—SHHH, people in the other rooms--!”

Sans finally relented. Setting the instrument down, he shook with laughter and rubbed one palm into an eyesocket.

“oh man. ohh my god the look on your fffhhaahaha!”

“Oh my fucking god. Did you teleport home _again_ to get your trombone _just to do that_?”

All he did was giggle. He hopped up on the bed beside you, utterly enamoured with the execution of his joke.

“You look good in that.”

Sans looked up at his own head, skull protected by the delicate, poofy shower cap.

“well, y’know. don’t wanna mess with the ‘do.”

You couldn’t help looking at him. The fascination of seeing him without a shirt on was unshakable. It all looked exactly as you would expect, for a skeleton, of course. But it was him. Alive, stocky, made of some ethereal sorcery. Still dripping a little bit. You wanted to understand. You were exhausted, drained, buzzing with amusement. You leaned over and gently touched one of his ribs.

For a second everything was serene. You moved your fingers, comparing the texture to the closest thing you knew, your weaponised full-length bone. Then you looked up at him and pulled back, quickly.

“Oh shit. Sorry. _Sorry_. I, uh. I just… wanted to…”

“’s ok,” he shrugged.

You stared him down.

“Really?”

“well, uh, what’s your intention, buddy.”

“I’m curious.”

He opened his arms out, making a welcoming gesture. You were trying not to think about it, but you were warming up, especially in the face. He was the one who waltzed out here without anything on, you encouraged yourself. You ran a thumb along his lowest rib like it was made of silk, then ever so slightly plucked at them, starting from the bottom. You flicked your gaze up to his face too, eager for any reaction. Sans remained smiling, and a little bit amused, from what you could tell. You thought about reaching under and inside the ribcage, but didn’t, in case that was somehow different. You withdrew your hand, and Sans definitely sighed.

Instead, your hands took hold on the bed where you sat. The silence hung awkward, hesitant.

“…i’m curious too,” Sans mumbled. You looked up in disbelief, but he didn’t have that joking, self-assured grin. He actually looked small and serious.

Keeping an eye on him, waiting just in case he turned the request into a prank, you started unlacing the back of your clothes. He was staring, completely still. With a similar shrug to the one he’d used you shed your underlayered top and laid it on the bed without saying anything. Sans’s pupils darted along your shoulders, then fixed on your bra.

He lifted his hand, then snapped it back to himself.

“No, it…” your mouth seemed very dry all of a sudden. “Uh, it’s okay…”

Your gaze attached to his hand. He reached and then scooted closer, coming right up to you on the side of the bed. Despite the hesitance, there was a palpable inquisitive fire smouldering in how he pressed the tips of his finger bones to your stomach. Gently, he nudged your tummy and prodded his way up your side, and you saw his pupils dart with shifting focus while quivering in the black void of his eyes.

He withdrew, and cleared his throat.

“thanks, um. uhh, that. okay. okay cool.”

You hummed in your mouth, a contained laugh, denying his sudden distancing.

“That was interesting.”

“yeah.”

“Magic is so…” you paused, waiting for the right word to come. “…Y’know?”

Sans slid onto his feet, not fully facing you. “yeah, uh, humans… i don’t… yeah. yeah.”

There was something between you, and it didn’t have a voice yet.

“i should… uh, i think i should check on… i should get back…”

“Oh. yeah. Okay. I’ll… see you soon, yeah?”

“yeah.”

The more he proved unable to recover from the fluster, the more stable you felt you were becoming. He didn’t head out right away, so you picked up your clothes, folded them up, placed your garments on the nearby dresser, and approached the bathroom.

“Be careful not to tire yourself too bad,” you offered, shutting the door.

You ran a bath. You goddamn needed one. That had been so unexpected you were still not sure it had even happened. Since when did touching a guy’s rib become such an emotional journey?

You fell into the cleaning routine you were used to, a very welcome return to something normal. You lay in the bath, surrounded by complimentary walls of bubbles, and you soaked warmth into your limbs and cleansed the day’s scuffs, perspiration and grazes. On your hip you found a small, sharp bruise, and on your leg you found a bigger one. This ordeal would leave you sore, but for the moment, it was soothed.

After that, you brushed your hair and teeth, found some more products (magically based, of course) in the cabinet, and used anything you found. Weariness did not allow you to be too specific. Finally, feeling a million times more comfortable, you put your underclothes back on and went back to your bed.

Sans hadn’t left.

He was lying on your bedcovers, on his side in a half-curl. Eyes closed, breathing snuffly yet even.

His bones didn’t weight much. You pulled and shifted him – so, so very carefully – up onto the pillow of the king-size until you could scoop him under the blankets. You made sure his head was propped and tucked him in, wasting no time in crossing to the other side and rolling into bed yourself.

For courtesy’s sake, you turned your body to face outward and looked at the wall instead of him, only for long enough to blink twice and then close your eyes. You could sense his presence there though, the slight warmth, the light breathing. There was nothing more comforting than that.


	11. Judge Me As Though There Were No Tomorrow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With this chapter I've changed the archive warnings. Given what chapter this is it might be obvious why - It's mostly just to be safe, but please take note of this going forward because I don't want to make anyone super uncomfortable!
> 
> Also that's the second chapter title with a Fallout reference! I'm not so good at these huh
> 
> As always, thank you to my beta reader auntie_diluvian for picking up on my bloopty blorps.

The hotel room was just yours. Lounging in privacy was a welcome way to start your day after the havoc you, and your body, were still recovering from. You weren’t sure if you’d noticed Sans leaving during the night but you’d known he would be gone when you awakened, it just seemed obvious.

It didn’t matter. He needed to go home after all he’d been through too. He’d show up again when it was necessary.

You dressed, washed up and used some more magical soothing oils you found in the bathroom on your bruises. You had no idea if they’d work on you, but the injuries themselves were magically inflicted, so it was worth a shot. You took your time, utilising everything this comfortable sanctuary offered before leaving. You wondered whether you should check out formally.

The towels Sans had used were very haphazardly sort of put back on their holder.

Down in the lobby there were no monsters to be seen. You took a last look at the oddly angled fountain. It was warm in the Core, flashing and humming with little lights swimming on control panels. You knew what to expect, but today it seemed the power was intentionally turned off. You saw no monsters on your way there. No security. No traps. The permanently dim lighting weighed on your mind more than the flickering cut-off puzzles the previous day. You walked the conveyor catwalks in near silence, accompanied only by beeps and trills from the steadfast equipment.

An elevator took you up high over the lava and machinery. The doors opened, and all you saw was grey.

A pattern of densely constructed buildings, extending through a cavern that went as far as you could see. It was so unlike Snowdin, with its fairy light colours and charm, and so distant from the haunting and introspective Waterfall. Just building upon building, clustered together until they could fit no more into the cave, in architectures with no theme or coherent style, and too dim and far away to make out any real shades. Your eyes watered at the detail packed into the expanse before you.

You stood on a walkway overlooking the cavern, leading over the top of the tightly knit structures. With only one way to go, you followed it. No other monsters were up here, and you assumed there would be some down there in the city, but could make out no sounds or signs of movement from your vantage point. The upper ceiling was too far above to see, but it did seem to echo noise from somewhere back to you.

In the near complete silence you fell into thought about Asgore’s situation. Everyone considered him a kind, fair man, easily persuaded, even. On the other hand, he was on the cusp of launching revenge against the world above for the horrible losses to his family. You’d known this since shortly after arriving down here. You could see it all – Toriel shutting herself off in despair, trying to nurture more humans when she found them in the absence of the one she’d lost. You knew Asgore was not a warmonger at heart, but you put no blame on him for his rage either.

Memories and answers had filtered back to you through the infinite questions asked by infinite hapless humans in your place. A human that fell down and later died, but nobody knew why or how. The King’s son, Asriel, had taken the persistent soul of that human and become the only monster to go through the barrier. Despite being a magical fusion of power and body melded as one, he’d been mortally wounded and came back to his parents to die.

In truth, you had no idea how to dissuade Asgore from the conviction of attacking humankind. He had nothing to lose. You were the final soul, walking directly towards the one who desired you. Taking yourself to the slaughter.

No, you chided yourself. That was too grim.

Sometimes you had plans or ideas, sometimes you had utter conviction, sometimes you had Sans. Right now, there was nothing. You had no idea how to go about this. You could no longer assess the trajectory of the timelines – they all started to merge again, those that got this far, all coming to the same conclusion… darkness. The answer was blocked from you. All that pushed you on, placed one foot in front of the other, was the pure, blind, undaunted determination that something, somehow _must_ work.

Below, almost level with you now, you could see the towering castle. Your steps paused, momentarily, to appreciate it. The rocky bridge twisted towards a cliff face and you saw a large door, once again marked with the royal symbols.

You walked through into a tunnel bathed in orange.

Something shocked you, destabilised you, and you couldn’t figure out what it was until you realised this corridor, lined with tall windows on both sides, seemed to have actual, natural sunlight flowing in. It seemed so unreal that you were reluctant to walk forward and test it. But you did, letting the light sweep over you as you passed. It was warm and real.

The corridor was so long you could hardly see the end. Pillars, stately and shadowed, lined each side between the windows. There was nothing else here, nothing of note anyway, just a hallway of rich, heavy light. At least, until you took a few more steps, and a warp snapped open in the air ahead of you in a way that was now familiar. You looked up, cheerily, even before you saw him.

“hey.”

“Hi. Where are we?”

“we’re nearly there.”

You waited to see if Sans had any more to say. Then you continued on, Sans taking his place beside you. He was back in his old clothes, looking comfy and out of place, and you smiled faintly remembering his undressed stunt the night before.

“So… hey, that stuff you did in the fight? That was super cool.”

“heh. yeah?”

“Yeah! Pulling bones out of the ground, I can’t even describe how metal that was.”

“well… you’ve seen it before,” he winked.

“Oh-“ of course. You looked around. Here. “Well it’s not…. Nothing like seeing the real thing. On my side. Yeah, you’re a real badass.”

“thanks, kid. hey, you weren’t so bad yourself.” He glanced looking down at the bone you were still carrying.

Distantly, you heard the chime of a large bell.

“so, uh, normally, this is where i’d come in to test you before you pass through.”

You nodded.

“prob’ly already knew that though. but, i figure i've judged you enough already, right?” Sans tilted his head to you, one eye closed in that sustained wink. You smiled back a little, grateful but not all that amused when you remembered how things had gone between the two of you in the past. “enough for _this_ timeline. i’ll let you take it from here.”

“You don’t really seem like the type to hang around in a place like this, waiting for someone to show up so you can weigh their moral compass.”

“oh yeah. not my style, right? that’s true.”

“So why’s it your job? Your… I don’t know, fifth job?”

“it just kinda is. the opening came up suddenly, had to be filled, so.”

“Do you mind if I ask you something?” you said, staring ahead to see if the end of the hallway would come into view. Patches of light scanned over you one by one.

“mm?”

“About souls. It’s not an unfamiliar concept, but your souls are actually tangible.”

“yup.”

“Humans don’t really know about this stuff. So you can pull a soul away from your body…?”

“we _can_. not often. only the actual person can let their soul come out. i think mettaton was trying to trick you into doin’ it without realising.”

You pulled a face.

“yeah.”

“So what does a soul look like? Mettaton’s was a pink heart?”

“they’re all that shape, but the colour changes. They mix colours when you’re young an’ then pick a proper shade as ya get older.”

“Oh. So what colour’s yours? …Can you tell me?”

Sans shuffled his step, ducking his chin into the hem of his jacket. He was staring at the floor.

“Oh, sorry. Shit, I didn’t mean—“

Sans popped back up and looked you right in the face, beaming.

“nah, i’m fuckin’ with you.”

The way you laughed was resigned – you felt he must have sensed your tension somehow, and intentionally played you to make the walk more endurable. He faced forward once more and clasped his hands behind his back.

“The thing is – you know how I can see… y’know.”

Sans just nodded.

“It helped. I would try it now, but from here on… it doesn’t work.”

“you lost your magic?” he jolted.

“Well—no. I still have it. There’s just nothing to see. All the timelines sort of blank out for me. This… sounds worse than it is, I think, but…” You immediately wished you hadn’t said anything. Sans was worried enough to look openly thoughtful, rubbing the side of his skull the way he did when in deep consideration. “I figure something must be about to happen that changes everything. That could be good…”

Sans instantly brightened up. “yeah. definitely.” The corridor’s exit was finally within view. “i really don’t get how you handled it all this time. i dunno if you get it, but.. not many monsters could understand something that powerful.”

“I don’t have anything to compare it to… and yeah, I can think of more fun powers to have.” You smiled to him. “Like moving things around, that’s really cool.”

“moving things?”

“Yeah, like you did…? How we finished Mettaton.”

“oh, pff.” Sans flapped a hand at you. “all i got is bones, my dude.”

“Huh?”

“bones, that’s my-- our thing? i was just holding your bones up there. the rest of you came too, i guess.”

That was more unnerving than you expected when you really thought about it. Keeping your eyes forward, the doorway through to the castle crept towards you.

“Man. This is a long hallway.”

You took a last look at Sans as you walked. He was, as always, completely at ease, walking fluidly at his own pace. Lax shoulders, under a mantle of his furred hood, and the gleaming dome of his skull reflecting golden and shining from the warm light, flashes of the windows lighting up as you and he passed in and out of the shadows.

You both stopped in front of the exit.

“so…”

“Mmm.”

“i, uhh…”

“I know,” you cut him off. “This is just gonna be me.”

“i would help, but…”

“This is my business with your King, I understand. You’ve already helped me.”

Sans kicked his foot, a little sheepish nonetheless.

“welp. see ya.”

“Yeah. Sure. Um, thanks again.”

Neither of you moved. This felt so oddly final, and you realised of course that ideally speaking, nothing would be the same after this. This negotiation for the freedom of monsters and yourself. You reached out your hand.

“heh,” Sans clasped it. His finger bones felt stubby and skinny around yours. “always like to see the proper way to say goodbye to an old pal.”

“Yeah,” you grinned back. “No practical joke this round?”

“oh, nah. it’s too fancy in here. prob’ly echo for hours,” he smiled wider, in a tone that suggested he’d considered it. “hey, i'll be back here if you need me though.”

With that he walked away, back the way he’d come. You watched for a while, wondering if he’d teleport, but he didn’t. You tore away, finally, and walked into the castle.

You continued alone through several hallways and up a long flight of stairs. You didn’t hurry. The walls through it all were grey, the floor was grey, and the sudden drabness unnerved you. By now you instinctively tried to look into the cosmos for guidance whenever you felt you needed direction, and you corrected yourself when nothing appeared before you.

Another large door opened up along your left side, through which you heard something familiar. Birdsong. You hadn’t heard in what felt like years. You followed the sound and stopped still, watching rays of sunlight fall into patterns on a bed of flowers. Real light, actual plants, it jogged the memory of your previous life in a profound way that you hadn’t considered before. The flowers were yellow and beautiful, waving back and forth as if there were a breeze, and the room was once again bright and warm and inviting.

Standing in the centre near a large golden throne was a large monster, horned, caped, and holding a watering can. Watching you in shock.

“Hi.”

“Oh. Hello,” he said, voice deep and rich and comforting in its relaxed tone.

He took the watering can in both hands, holding it in front of him.

“It’s nice to meet you,” you offered, stalling on the idea of whether you should bow to royalty. He appeared effortlessly regal, maybe due to his size and the amiable level of longer facial hair.

“I… I knew, of course, this day would come. I heard reports of a human having appeared somewhere in Waterfall. You evaded capture and came here on your own.”

“Was it Undyne that told you? She was, uh, trying to jump the gun a little bit, I think…”

“Well, the important thing is that you’re here.” Setting his can down by the leg of the golden throne, he stepped away from you and stared up at the ceiling. The garden was the most serene place you’d ever been in, clearly flourishing because of his attentive care. “At least you don’t seem quite as young as the others…”

“Your… Highness? I came to talk to you about the barrier…”

You approached. He didn’t seem dangerous in the slightest, despite being the one who’s ordered all humans a death sentence. You thought you’d feel more scared, though now you were in the moment, you weren’t scared of Asgore. Despite his enormous stature, his horns, his imposing frame embellished by his cloak, he didn’t intimidate  you. But the idea of what he thought of humans certainly did.

“Oh, yes. We should get to that.”

“I know this is a pretty risky position to ask you this,” you continued, “but I came, willingly, to ask you not to—“

“Please, child. Come this way first. I must show you.”

He didn’t look back or wait for you. Asgore trod between the flowers to the doorway at the opposite side of the room, and all you could do as follow. You didn’t want to leave this area with the light and the birdsong, but he was already some way ahead of you.

“Nice day out,” he rumbled as you caught up.

“Yeah, but how can you know? How is it possible? I thought we were underground-“

He cut off your question with a deep chuckle. “Follow me, little human. Don’t worry. You will understand.”

The atmosphere out of the throne room had changed completely. You seemed to be back in a cave of sorts, but not the shimmering gemstone ones of Waterfall. Just a cave, a vacant tunnel, leading out of what you assumed was the back of the castle. There was nothing regal, nothing to indicate it was part of the same building - it was more of a natural passageway that had been left exactly as it was found.

You went with the King through one final arch and found yourself facing a massive streak of light.

It blossomed from the ground just a few steps away. It pulsed with waves of stronger and deeper light, and it hummed with magic you could feel even from where you were standing.

“This… is the barrier,” said Asgore, solemnly.

You watched the light arc over you and extend up farther than you could see. This was the legacy of your race. The thing, well, the only thing, that was keeping thousands of monsters separated from a world of humans who had no idea they existed. Currently, the only thing keeping monsters alive at all.

“It’s so close.”

“Just one of the edges,” he said, and you realised your journey had taken you from falling at one side of the barrier to the opposite edge. “This is how my castle can grow flowers in my garden, which I of course share with anyone who wishes to visit. And how I can hear the birds sing, just beyond there, perching, flying freely. Sunlight falls through, only here. It’s so very, very close.”

You kept your eyes on the flowing, ebbing and darkening magic in front of you as your heart wrenched. Asgore didn’t sound like he was blaming you for this, and he didn’t say it to be pitied. His voice was deep and morose, factual. You’d made it all the way here, close enough to touch the opposite side of the magical seal, so you did. Your hand lay flat against a cool, fluctuating surface, the sheer strength of the magic in it buzzing through your fingers. This was what both you and Asgore needed to fight against together. You took a deep breath. You turned to talk to the King.

Asgore had stepped back, leaving some distance, and with his cape parted by his arm he drew out an enormous, deep red trident. He levelled his eyes with you as your heart leapt into your mouth, then he flinched to stare down at the floor.

“Asgore,” you said slowly, delicately, “I just wanted to talk.”

“I’m sorry, young one. Truly, I am. But this must come to an end.”

He swung out his weapon, which sliced the air with a deep _woosh_ , surprising you with its length. You were going to panic. How could you have been this idealistically stupid, walking right up to the person who gave the order to kill you? You flexed your fingers nervously, squeezing them around your trusty conjured bone for reassurance.

“I understand,” he continued, drooping forward like a towering peak somehow buckled by the wind. “I do not want it to be this way either. Perhaps, in another time, we could have been friends.” He sounded pained. His ears and eyes cast down, he had no pride in what he was saying.

A mechanical whirr caught your ear, and you realised why Asgore had escorted you to this room. Pedestals arose from the floor – glass cases, each one lifting to your own height and bearing a glowing, differently coloured heart. Green, yellow, blue… the living souls of other humans whose paths mirrored your own.

One of the cases was unlit, empty.

“No, no, _please_ hear me out,” you stammered. “I know what we did to you was wrong. It’s been terrible for monsters down here. There’s got to be some way to fix this, and I’ll help you— “Asgore advanced on you, raising his weapon. “If y—if you go through with this and break the barrier with my soul to fight all humanity, you’ll be wiped out, please!”

“A promise made in despair and desperation, and now the only thing my kind clings to as their last hope,” he was close enough now that you heard his subdued tone. “I can no longer deny them this.”

The strike came towards your right hand side with the side of the trident pole. You cried out as you moved away, and Asgore followed up immediately with a jab from the fork while you were unsteady. Brandishing your bone just in time, and fortifying it with both hands, you managed to catch the trident between the prongs and stay the blow.

As fast as it had come, Asgore jerked his weapon back from you and paced to the side, forcing you to turn to keep him in sight. This was nothing like how you’d fought Mettaton or even Undyne. He was huge, direct, and well-trained. With his head bowed to you, aiming at you with his horns, he was as much a feral beast with the instinct to match.

“Please, _please_ just listen, I don’t—“

He feinted towards you, forcing you to block the wrong way before rearing back his arm, but that gave you a second to swing your bone back up and block that strike as well. For a second he was so close you saw his nostrils flare with an exhaled snort. He may be the mightiest of all, the King of the Underground, but a voice in the back of your head reminded you, _you’re a human. You’re real, physical, flesh and blood. You’re stronger than all monsters put together if you want to be_.

On the next blow, you didn’t just hold it off, you swung out and deflected it with an attack of your own. The trident skewed aside, despite the clear force behind it. You backed away from Asgore, leading him, making him follow you, tracking his weapon and deflecting it with precise smacks each time it came toward you. As you passed by each canister the colour of the heart within illuminated Asgore in a bright single hued glow. Your steps, you realised, were just like how you’d moved during Undyne’s battle for your soul.

“Rrrrghh,” growled the King. “So be it.”

He lunged. More sure of yourself now, you sought to match his fervour and skill. Forget appearances. You stepped forward, finally. You were human. He caught your strike this time, holding back your bone from connecting on him. The blows you traded were evenly matched, meeting in the middle, leaving you unscathed and confident.

You were so close. You could see, behind the mountainous silhouette of the King, the arching, flowing barrier that was your only obstacle in going home. So close. Everything you’d endured to travel here, you couldn’t give up now. You could do this. You struck Asgore on the chest, and irrespective of his bulk and your size, he reeled. He huffed. His armour was dented.

He tried to counter attack and made his swing so obvious, you ducked under it, one hand on the ground. Pushing yourself up you swung again. Papyrus had captured you, Undyne had knocked you unconscious, Muffet had tried to use you as pet food, Mettaton had made a spectacle of you. You weren’t doing this any more. Your journey was at an end, you had made it all this way.

Just a few steps away from you was home.

You raised your weapon, and when you moved in you saw the King widen his eyes and do nothing to block the blow. Force of will imbued the strike, clobbering the King against his side and the force of that blow sent him to the ground. He rolled, his armour crushed. Part of a splinter had broken off from your bone. Asgore wheezed and struggled to stand, trembled, failed to stay on his knees.

“No! Oh no no no—“ You ran to him immediately, bone tumbling to the floor. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—oh god, I’m sorry…”

The King was wheezing, with no trace of malice as he reached out. You let him tuck his huge, soft fingers into your hair and under your chin as he held you to look back at him.

“It’s been so long…”

“Don’t go anywhere. I only… wanted to…”

You were shaking too. This frustration was boiling over too much for you to take. You’d been through so much to earn the trust of these people, you couldn’t destroy all that work this way.

“Please, human. Quiet yourself.” Asgore groaned as he tried to prop up his body. “You have proven your might against me, as I suspected. I just wanted to do my best. To do right by my people, and try to salvage their hopes and dreams. You have overpowered me.” All at once the feeling of confidence you’d had that empowered you with the thought of going home was withered, shameful and disgusting.

“I can get help, sir. I swear I can work with you to save everyone, that’s all I want to do. I’ll get you—“

“You want to return to your world. Your family. I understand that,” he coughed. “I suppose that is what I want.” You were about to rise and run for assistance, but stopped and waited. “If the Queen were here, we could act as one, ruling the kingdom in unison. Without her, every day I doubt myself. I do what I feel is best for my people in the moment, but I keenly feel the lack of advice and counsel. Human, if I can try to fulfil my promise and fall by your hand, then I will have done all I could and be reunited with my soul’s equal. I just want to see my wife. I just want to see my son.”

“Don’t die!” your breathing was becoming erratic.

Although in pain, Asgore chuckled. “It will be all right. For me, and for you – if you take my soul with you, you can leave… you have earned…”

“Asgore! Toriel’s alive! I met her, back in the old ruins where everyone used to live. She’s all alone and she bakes pies and reads books about snails.”

The beast in front of you, lying prone and covered by his cape, shifted and tried to look at you. He grunted with the effort.

“She… is?”

You got on your knees to pick up his heavy, furred hand and hold it in your lap.

“When I left she tried to stop me. She thought you’d kill me like the others. That’s why she won’t come out. But maybe if we try to do this together instead, maybe if we show her that you didn’t do it, and that I trust you—“

“I did,” he spluttered, voice cloyed with sobs. “I attacked you, I am the worst of what she expects of me—“

“No, look at me! I’m still—we’re both still here! We can fix this!” Asgore’s paw twitched in your hands. “We can fix this. We can get her back. You could see her again.”

Slowly, the King’s breathing evened and you saw some pain ebb from his features. He leaned up on his arm, expression beginning to focus.

“You may not realise, human, the depth of what you have just given me… I can… try. Maybe I can…”

“Just stay where you are. Hold on while I get help for you.”

You left him to start picking himself up on his own. He needed aid, and you had no idea what form that might take. You didn’t know anyone with healing magic – you needed Sans. Sans knew everything. You ran for the door, readying your voice to start calling his name. Your steps fell short before reaching the doorway back to the castle on hearing a _snap_ and a choked growl.

Asgore had not picked himself up. He was pinned to the ground with some sort of green straps tying his hands and chest, pulling him back as he coughed and struggled.

“Asgore!”

Whatever was holding him down writhed and clamped, and Asgore went very still. As you ran back to help you saw something on the restraints – there were leaves. Vines.

As you watched, light began to rise out of his body. It grew and collected over him until it shone in the form of a brilliant heart, and with Asgore’s body bereft of it, his form just disintegrated. He was no more than a pile of ash.

“No, no—“

You felt breathless and tight in the chest, running back to where his body had just lain. Those vines that had trapped him uncurled and withdrew, and a yellow flower popped up in the middle of the ash. It had a face, and it looked around the base of itself, grinning.

“Well, gee. We really did it!”

Then it looked up, basking in the light of that heart, and shot something out towards it. Asgore’s soul shook and faded away as you watched.

“Who the hell are you?” your mouth felt dry. You hardly knew what to say, half of you not believing the sudden disaster you had failed to salvage. “Why did you do that?!”

“Oh, come on. Is that any way to greet a new friend? I’m Flowey!”

You just stood there.

“The flower!”

He waited for a reaction.

“I know you don’t know me, but I sure know you! You’ve been _busy_ down here, huh?”

“What?”

“I’ve been keeping track of you for a long time! I was actually right there when you fell down here, and of _course_ I had to see what kind of things a new human would get up to.”

“It’s you!” Remembering everything Sans had warned you about being followed made you feel doubly unprotected and alone. “You’re the one who used to…”

“Have complete and total power over our timeline down here, yeah!” it chirped. The flower’s voice was incessantly cheerful and annoying. You couldn’t help grimacing, watching it twist in the ground and disturb the ashes Asgore had left behind. “That was me! And then you came down here, and…”

The flower’s face instantly became twisted, nightmarish, a prickly impossible maw.

“ _Took it_.”

Its face returned to normal.

“That wasn’t right, you know! Just showing up where someone lives and taking what belongs to them. That’s actually pretty rude. Not only that, you got the insight into all the times I’d wound back, and a bunch more besides. I just wanted to see what you’d do.”

You partly listened to him, and otherwise focused your attention on moving away and looking for anything in the room you might be able to use somehow. Aside from the souls floating in their jars it was empty. Papyrus’s bone lay where you’d dropped it, a splinter cut from the side. Hurriedly, you picked it back up.

“I couldn’t introduce myself earlier, not like I planned. I don’t think an _adult_ human would be so easy to work on. So I just kept my eye on you, and… pow!” It did a little spin in place. Its petals swung almost gracefully with the motion. “All this time, and I’ve never been powerful enough to bring that old fool down… but _you_ did!”

“I-If you wanted your powers back, wouldn’t you want to kill _me_ , like just about everyone else—why him!”

Flowey smiled at you in a way that was distinctly uncomfortable. You realised then that you had no reason to be afraid. Flowey was weaker than Asgore, maybe just weak altogether, he didn’t look strong. And you were a real, red-blooded human. He could not hurt you, you realised, and the power you’d been living with would save you from him.

You concentrated. You looked briefly into the timespace – absolute blackness. Instead you needed to work backwards in your own timeline. Go back, stop yourself before Asgore was killed, change the future.

“Ohhhh no you don’t!” that irritating voice sang. You had your eyes closed, forcing yourself to push against the very present itself. For all the time you’d observed the threads around you, you had not altered your own, and you were far less practised at it, feeling like your thoughts were sluggish, driving through treacle. “It’s too late for _that_!”

The sound of something breaking disconnected your thoughts. You opened your eyes. Vines had broken through the floor and risen and looped around the glass canisters. They pulled taut, and you caught a glimpse of Flowey’s face in inhuman triumph as glass shattered around the entire room. You fell back to get away. Shards were everywhere. The noise of shattering continued on and on as glass fragments piled up under the podiums. When you looked up, the coloured light reflecting on Flowey got deeper and deeper, in the centre of them all, as the souls gathered to him and surrounded him.

Flowey was laughing. You tried to refocus your thoughts; you couldn’t. You tried to remind yourself you could do this, you could take it all back, but you couldn’t, and the laughter only got louder. You wanted to get to the door, escape the room, but there was no room. You tried to yell, only there was no air.

There was nothing at all.


	12. The End

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just for clarity's sake - this isn't an ending to the fic, I just wanted that as the title.  
> Oh boy, I can't believe I'm finally posting this.
> 
> As usual thank you to [Auntie_Diluvian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Auntie_Diluvian/pseuds/Auntie_Diluvian) for reading through to catch my splorps.

Sans lay on the ground and did not open his eyes.

Fuck.

There had been a jump. He was going to lie there and come to terms with the situation, that was his general procedure for this sort of thing. Instead of starting to panic over what might not be there, focus first on the things that are.

He flexed his fingers. Was he intact? Seemed to be. No pain. He kept his eyes closed. Stay calm. Where had he just been?

In Hotland. Why? He strained to remember. He’d been on a walkway over a lava pit, contemplating the human’s—

The human.

He almost jolted upright but immediately commanded himself to stay still.

He remembered.

That couldn’t be a reset. He remembered the hallway, walking with her, leaving her. He‘d been staying near to the castle just in case. He remembered.

Sans slowly opened his sockets.

He blinked, doubting that he’d managed to accomplish that feat. It stayed completely black either way. He lifted his arm, seeing the same frayed, dulled hoodie up to his shoulder. He sat up, slowly, gingerly.

There was nothing above him that he could reach. He was standing on something solid, slightly shiny, reflecting a faint bit of him. Under his feet, Sans could see something down far below. Something writhing, pulsating. His small fist hammered the floor, and it barely gave off a noise. Down below he glimpsed a second figure. Smaller. Familiar.

He bashed his shoulder into the blockade to no avail.

* * *

 

When your consciousness had returned, you were lying in absolute darkness. Dizzy, unstable and scared, you hurried to your feet and then regretted it. Your head swam like someone had smacked you with a brick and then made you eat that brick. It was hard to see or focus when there was nothing _to_ see, but you checked over your own body and found your sight, and everything else, to be fine.

What had Flowey done?

As the question formed in your mind, something heaved towards you out of the darkness. A massive, bulging shape you couldn’t perceive until it dragged itself closer. You stood before some kind of enormous plant, arms covered with thorns hefting into the pitch black floor and pulling the rest of its considerable weight. Above that, a cervine skull with a dislodged jaw and beady eyes that were trained, unceasingly, on you.

Crude tube systems connected its arms, and other body parts in the writhing mass, to its head, then from there upward into the imperceptible darkness above. They bulged and quivered as it began to laugh.

You were too far gone to feel scared. What had happened to the world you were from? How had you fucked up badly enough to cause this? As you tried, mentally, to reach for help, looking for the extra plane of vision that for the last few weeks had branched out from your own, you felt nothing. The power itself was gone. Your face contorted under the glowering of the enormous monster regarding you with unnerving glee, as you realised you were both alone and blind.

“I really ought to thank you,” said the grotesque creature, its voice disembodied but recognisable. “Even _I_ didn’t really think you’d pull it off!”

“Flowey?”

“Howdy! It’s me! And now I have this cool new form, and my own universe, finally!” His thorned, clawed arms twitched as they clacked at the floor. “Oh, where are my manners. I should give you the tour. Over here’s the void. And over _there’s_ the void… there’s a lot of void.”

Despite not wanting to play into his words, you found yourself looking around and up – there was absolutely nothing here. There wasn’t even a floor, just solid darkness.

“This is what it’s all been for. To tear down that useless, boring old world and start something new. This one! I never could have done it without your help.” You stared at him. The abject horror of his appearance struck a dull chord in the back of your mind which you refused to acknowledge. “You know, how you killed Asgore for me? I tried so many times! Over and over and over I ran that world and nothing I ever did could get him out of the way. I’m so lucky you came along!”

Out of all the thoughts rushing through your head, you shouted back, “I didn’t do anything for you!”

“I watched you the whole way. Right from the moment you came in and took my power away. And now, guess what? It’s just us! We get to stay here for the rest of time. And if time ends, I’ll go back and start over. Isn’t that better than whatever you were doing? Trying to open the barrier?”

He was just talking to you to taunt you, and when you realised that, you realised there was no reason to say anything back. You just stood there. Try to straighten your thoughts and figure out what you could even do in this situation.

“And after aaaall that effort!” the mutated plant continued. “What a shame! Not that you didn’t get to free them, I mean – that they’re _all dead_. Hee hee. It’s just us now. I erased them all. But they weren’t really your friends, were they? I mean, you _tried_ , but none of them really _liked_ you. Most of them tried to kill you! See, isn’t it better to stop all those silly games and just be here with me? There’s nothing you have to hide from me.”

You were attempting to not look at him, to direct your attention elsewhere, but it was difficult when he was the only other thing in existence. Something about the way he said that caught your interest. Did he… really actually want to be friends? He sounded almost jealous.

“And you don’t have to worry about the humans wiping monsters out any more, because there _are_ no humans! You have no family left, and neither do I! It’s… freeing in its own way.”

“Did you _want_ to erase everything,” you muttered, looking around. “Or did this just… happen.”

“This is MY WORLD. It’s exactly the way I want it to be. Nothing but me… and you.”

“Don’t you think that’ll get boring?”

“Oh no,” you saw Flowey’s bulging eyes regard you with mirth, and your stomach sank with fear. “I think we’re going to have a _lot_ of fun.”

There was a flash so fast you couldn’t track it, and pain seared across your arm. You yelped, backing away. Shots were firing – lasers – shooting out from the darkness, you couldn’t even see where. They burned, catching you on the shoulders and legs as you stumbled to get away. Shot after shot followed you. Faint smoke rose around your feet where the blasts missed you. But you couldn’t dodge them, not with any rhythm or foresight. They came literally from nowhere. It was too fast, too chaotic. You were burned.

You fell on one knee, wondering why you’d bothered trying to avoid them.

Flowey laughed with uproarious amusement. “Whoops! I guess you can’t prance your way out of this one.”

“What do you want me to do?” you panted.

“Well, see, I’m well aware you won’t give up. But now, you don’t have to! All you have to do is die. Eventually. When I get tired of seeing you run. And since you’re such a _persistent_ little human, I’ll just go back and start over!”

Desperately, you tried to dredge up the magical power that used to let you bend the laws of the universe. Until just a moment ago, it had been so simple to do, and now, somehow, you couldn’t remember how it worked. You snapped your eyes open and fell backwards, painfully, squirming to avoid the massive thorn-branch limb of the Flowey abomination landing right where you had been. Before you could get up, the other arm smacked into you and tore shreds out of your clothes and the skin underneath. You were winded, gasping in pain, too shocked to move.

“Aw, is that it? Nothing? No fighting back?” Flowey said, putting on a false sense of sympathy. “I didn’t think it would be _that_ easy.” He raised the extensive plant limb again. “Call for help.”

You said nothing while patting your back to check the superficial bleeding.

“I said, call for help! Surely one of your ~ _friends_ ~ will come running!”

You had no trust in your own voice. This situation seemed to have been lost completely. You really were in a void of nothingness, and any thoughts you’d had hoping that this was a dream, or that Flowey couldn’t really be as powerful as he said he was… there was no hope in that. You had no power, no strength, and your only weapon was the bone you were still holding. No good now. You wrapped your arms around Papyrus’s gift, willing yourself not to shed tears in front of this monstrosity.

“What’s the matter, didn’t you make _one_ friend who would bend the fabric of space and time for you? God, you’re pathetic!”

Against all the judgement you still possessed, as his booming words heated your face and brought tears to your eyes, you just wanted to believe that someone else out there still existed.

“I need… help—“

“Oh! What was that? Louder!”

“I-I…” you were going to cry. You were going to cry and there was nowhere in existence he wouldn’t see it. “Please! Help me!”

Flowey waited, mocking you by listening and waiting in the silence of this empty hell.

“Oops. Looks like nobody came!”

Somewhere, too far above you to see, came a sound like shattering glass. You saw Flowey turn his head upward alongside you and something was falling, falling fast, and disappeared.

Then Sans popped into existence right in front of you, wobbling, on one knee with his hands to the ground.

“What!”

Whatever you were standing on shook. Flowey was gnashing his multiple jaws, thrashing against the ground.

“heh… hey…” you’d never felt relief like what you felt when you heard his calm, deep voice. “sorry to drop in like this…” He sounded very tired.

“Are you _kidding_ ,” said Flowey, now rolling his many eyes. “ _You_? Here? That is rich! How in the hell did _you_ get any determination?”

Sans stood, still a little shaky. You knelt with him to support his stance.

“same way you did, buddy. ‘s not mine.”

“God, the _irony_! The embodiment of the will to live,” Flowey looked over the two of you. Clearly full of disdain, but with a growing amusement, too. “Y’know what? This is perfect.”

You heard something to either side of you, then before you could blink Sans turned and grabbed your midsection and you disappeared. Holding, floating. He popped you back in just a small distance away, and you watched Flowey’s enormous arms clash together, thorns grinding and clicking together, right where you had just been.

You whined, still feeling the pain in your back. Flowey pulled his hulking mass towards you.

“Thanks,” you said, paying more attention to how tired he seemed. His sockets seemed sunken on his skull, despite his usual smile.

“i know, but—run.”

He pushed you back and moved in the opposite direction. Lasers splayed out, scorching the ground at your feet. But there weren’t as many, and one only skimmed your ankle. Searching across the area Flowey sat in you could see Sans, leading an array of lasers away from you as he ran, in itself an odd thing to witness. He stopped still and your heart leapt with worry, but he blinked out of view as the shots converged and reappeared safely almost within reach of you.

“Sans-“

You wanted to say something, warn him, but he already knew the danger. Let him know that you knew he couldn’t survive a single hit, but you couldn’t voice it, in case Flowey would overhear. You wanted to apologise for this, but you weren’t sure how to. Sans scrambled, you heard his finger bones tap across the ground in his haste to get himself up, and he dove in front of you. Flowey was throwing something, what looked like chunks of metal jumped out of the air and arced down towards you.

You had just enough time to realise they were bombs, actual real airstrike shaped bombs, before an uninterrupted fence made of bones erupted from the ground, right against Sans’s back. You knelt behind it with him, automatically gripping the front of his shirt. Enormous shocks rattled you as most bombs missed, but a few hit the shield, and the explosions were so loud you couldn’t think. To your amazement the bones were nearly unscathed, and so were the two of you.

“Sans…”

He looked at you, solemn grit in his expression. It almost looked unlike the Sans you knew.

“we gotta be careful.”

“We… can’t do this! He’s so powerful, I don’t know what to do!”

Sans chuckled. He placed his hand on yours, where it was still gripping a tight hold on his clothing. For the first time, at least with real conviction, he looked up at you with fondness – like a layer had peeled away, and there was bitter regret and sadness too, but alongside it, because of it, was solidarity. It was his expression, with the usual barriers pulled back, that took down your last shreds of denial and shot icy realisation into your heart. Everything else was gone. You were the last two people in existence, and the last hope either of you had.

“how did… what _is_ this thing?”

“It—ah—it was a flower. It was following me, I thought I saw it in Waterfall or… I don’t remember. A flower was the thing that used to have control over everything, you were right—and I killed—I killed Asgore!” You wrapped your arms around yourself, scrunching up the torn fabric along your sides. “I… he was really hurt, and Flowey popped in and finished him and took the six souls, and now he’s powerful enough to rewrite the entire universe.”

Sans stared at you. His eyes, creased, seemed more and more concerned as realisation set in.

“Don’t hide from me,” said Flowey’s sweet, slightly warped voice. “We’re friends! We _have_ to be friends, since we’re all that’s left. That must be a relief, right, tiny little human? You _finally_ have a friend now – me! After you spent so long trying to get to know those other monsters, and none of them really liked you…” Sans had been about to move, but he looked up at you, gauging your reaction. It was easy enough to dismiss Flowey, knowing what he was trying to do. You ignored everything he said. “Maybe if you _had_ been friends with them this all would have gone differently! And even though you kept messing up, you never used your gift to go back and change it! That’s kind of insulting to me, huh? I could show you _so many things_ you could do… but now? There’s nothing, nobody left. No family for you to go home to. Your home doesn’t exist. And there’s no going back now, you know that, right?”

Sans’s fixed stare was making you nervous. Your head swung down, away from him, so he wouldn’t see you trying to focus hard on anything else.

“And _you_. Smiley Trashbag. Wow, you really helped, didn’t you? You tried so hard… except not when it really mattered. Whoops! She was giving her best the whole time, and what did you do? Have a tantrum and – oh, what a surprise – avoid doing as much as possible.”

Sans did what you had done, and turned his face away. You wished you weren’t hearing this.

“Oh, but you tried,” Flowey squeaked, blissful satisfaction resonant in his disembodied voice. “You eventually tried, for _her_. All that time Papyrus spent encouraging you, doting on you, trying to motivate you, and you ignored him, and then some human girl shows up and you finally get it? Man, that’s cold, y’know? How would your brother feel if he knew how useless he was? Well,” you heard the most satisfied chuckle, “how would he feel if he _still existed_ , I guess.”

You held yourself totally still, trying not to look at him. Flowey wasn’t attacking or trying to break the wall of bones you had cowered behind. He was content to wait it out. Enjoying it.

“Maybe it’s a good thing he’s not here, you know? So he doesn’t know his good old big brother doesn’t _need him_. At least we’ve spared him that!”

“Sans?” you whispered, because he wasn’t moving. The skeleton lifted his head, smiling wryly but not widely.

“heh, nah. pretty naïve if he thinks shit like that’ll get to me.”

He steadied himself as he got up, dusting off his sleeves, and walked around towards Flowey.

“Sans--!”

“hey, you. big ol’ weed.”

You peeked around the edge of the thin barrier to watch Sans stand like he was chatting to a rather large pal.

“Still smiley, I see!”

“eh, you need better material. you think that’s new t’me?”

Flowey lifted his thick, vine-wrought arms and bent the thorns against themselves on each hand, as if cracking knuckles.

“Wow, that’s kind of pathetic, actually.”

He lifted one arm for a full strike, but his sheer size meant the wind-up took several seconds. Sans just watched, casually eyed his opponent until the last moment, and disappeared. Movement caught your attention and drew your eyes up to where Sans had arrived in midair, extremely high, and threw out his hand. He cast a line of bones in an arc while Flowey searched him out to begin firing more lasers and bombs. Sans seemed completely unconcerned. The bones rained down and struck the huge plant’s irregular body, and Sans either deflected the projectiles with them or pulled himself out of the way.

There was nothing you could do to help him, you thought ruefully, as you hid and watched him conjure his heart out.

He could only fall for so long, and Sans blipped himself back to the ground, breathing hard. But in the mess of attacks Flowey had lost sight of him, and those bones proved to be only a distraction. Sans raised a hand and, from the unending darkness where Flowey’s attacks also came from, an enormous animalistic skull broke into view. Then another, and a third, and more still, until they covered the unapparent ceiling – huge jaws, massive teeth and beady eyes.

An army of bestial skulls arrayed over Sans, and he was their master, issuing them a single gestured command.

_Fire._

Each one opened its mouth. The hinges of their gigantic maws spread apart as they stared Flowey down. Your captor seemed thrown off and failed to respond to the oncoming assault, he just stared up, amazed at the appearance of an attack that matched his size and power.

Sans stood with his feet apart. He gave his skulls their moment to aim and pointed down at Flowey’s chimeric mass. He was tiny, miniscule, compared to the army he directed with a motion of his hand.

The energy blast that fired from the first skull took up its entire mouth, shooting with an unearthly deep noise, followed by the same sound from the next, and the next, and several dozen others, and it quickly became too bright to look. You withdrew and covered your eyes. You could only hear the crackle of energy and the sound of resonant impacts where they hit, accompanied by tremors shaking the floor, overlapping to the point where it was impossible to count them.

You had known – seen – that he was powerful. But you curled up, trying to protect yourself, hearing and feeling the fallout of Sans’s onslaught and being in awe of him from only that. He had looked so small, standing there dwarfed by Flowey’s arms and coils and tubes. And you, hiding behind a shield he’d made, had nothing.

You peeked out, eventually. The blazing light was gone, the floating heads were gone. Sans had fallen to his knees, breathing so hard you could see it from a distance. And Flowey was charred, blackened. Broken. Torn. Pipes had burst, whatever fleshy pulp made up part of his body was scarred and wounded.

You scampered to Sans’s side, breathlessly.

“You—holy shit, are you okay?”

He reached out his arm, grasping for support, and you hefted him up to his feet. His chest heaved against you. You were worried – the way he looked gave you no confidence. It was like he’d used every ounce of energy, right down to the wire that kept him alive. His eyes were barely open, sweat glistened on his head. He lost his balance and you fell on one knee to help steady him.

“heh—heheh—“ he mumbled against you. “could… really use a nap…”

“Holy shit,” you breathed, not thinking straight enough for anything else. Your hand settled on his back so you could rub motions on him, thought which of you that was soothing, you weren’t sure.

“No…” croaked a drained, warped voice. “Nooo… I was so close…”

Sans slumped forward, leaning into you. You alone looked up and watched Flowey struggling to move.

“I… I can’t believe…”

You were pulled away from Sans. You struggled, not comprehending at first, but something strange was gripping you. You felt very strange, twisted up and backward, and everything moved in front of you. The last minute was undone. You and Sans were behind the rack of bones again, he was standing ready to walk out, and everything was as it was before he’d performed his attack.

“I can’t _believe_ the two of you are that stupid!”

“Sans-“

You caught him, pulling him back. He let you. He was looking around left and right, up at Flowey and back to you.

“what-“

“He fucking… he undid it. He controls the timeline. You smashed the hell out of him and he didn’t die, he just went back to before…” You knew it, you’d felt exactly what happened. Sans watched you and gave you a look – he believed it, but he was now reconsidering his options. “I don’t… we can’t do this. We can’t beat him, you just… put everything into that one attack, and he just pulled us back, we can’t…”

“Sounds like you’re getting it!” beamed a voice that now made you unreservedly angry yet made you feel utterly helpless.

“what do we do?” Sans lifted his eyes to you, still facing the floor. He was asking, genuinely, he wanted you to tell him how to fix this, and you didn’t know. You fought to hold back a rising sob just looking at him, standing there and asking you, _you_ , for help, for instruction, because surely you’d know. You’d use some magic to see all the options; you’d know what to do.

You didn’t.

You just shook your head, mouth parted and silent. Sans cast his eyes down again.

“C’mon, this is getting boring! Where are my little friends?”

The shielding fence beside you splintered and shattered in a single blow, making you reel back with the force of it. You reached for Sans, just to hold onto him, and found nothing and with your eyes closed, avoiding the debris, you panicked. Don’t let him be hit. Please don’t.

Another crash to your right. Dashing away, you covered your face and looked between your fingers. Sans was there, face drawn into a tight grimace, popping out and back in over short distances as Flowey lashed the air with vines. You sighed with relief for a split second, seeing him escape, before more vines slammed into you with the speed and weight of being hit by a car.

You dropped, crying out, tumbling onto your shoulder and then lying there, unable to move for pain. Your body tried to curl up, but it hurt. You were coughing, still blind, and feeling like you were going to sink into unconsciousness.

Was this it? You could only think of one thing: wishing that Flowey would cut this branch short and go back to before you’d been hit. You’d been fine just seconds ago. He could do it so easily. Go back and be in less pain, go back and stop him from taking the whole world away from you, go back and stop _yourself_ from what you did to Asgore-

The vision of the last time you saw the King you’d worked so hard to meet on your own terms appeared. Crumpled, wheezing, wrapped up by vines constricting his arms and chest…

You felt something pressing, wrapping around your neck.

Panic.

Your arms flailed against the ground, pushing yourself up despite the pain that brought tears to your eyes. No, you had to see. You had to move. You reached desperately to your neck to rip away the vines and stop Flowey from strangling you.

Your hand scraped on bone.

Finally the world settled into place, and you looked back at Sans. He sat beside you, eyes wide open but so, so haggard, awkwardly positioned with his hand cupped to your neck. Your eyes trailed to his arm, and your quickened heartbeat thrummed under the slight pressure of his fingers.

He saw you were alive and slumped with a sigh.

“don’t you go anywhere.”

“Ha ha… you remembered.”

He gave you a sheepish smile. You pulled your legs up to yourself, wincing and swearing, but getting it over with. Nothing was actually broken yet.

“I’m fine.”

“well you’re not _fine_.”

“You know.”

“yeah.”

“What do we…” you looked around you, seeing bones. Breaking through the ground – or slammed into it – in a short concave around the two of you for shelter, but this time there were more of them. Many, many more, you blinked, seeing the skewed array of bones much like your own spraying out in every direction, splitting the floor into something completely impassable. You raised your arm, looking at the bone you had. Still with you, after all this time. “What do we _do_?”

“i don’t know.”

Sans put his arms around you.

You twitched, the sudden contact was so surprising that you gasped. Sans’s fingers dug into the tatters of your shirt. He leaned in, ducking his face so the very top of his head leaned into your body. He shuddered. Slowly, you returned his embrace and felt something in you despair, though you couldn’t tell why.

“You’ve made this very fun and interesting for me!” chimed that ever-present voice. You recoiled. “Keep it up! We’ve got a lot to do from now ‘til eternity!”

You clutched Sans harder, listening to the distant rolling crumble as bones were broken and Flowey slowly searched through the entire field of them.

Sans pulled back a little but stayed just below you, looking up and searching your face with his fast, beady pupils. You wanted to have an answer to give him, and it came to you as you seemed to feel your very body drag on you like a dead weight.

“Okay.”

“yeah?”

“I don’t think Flowey actually wants us to die. We’re the only things _in_ this world. If we’re here to amuse him he’ll probably… if we die, he’ll go back and do it over again.”

“that seems… yeah, i'm with ya.”

“The only way to get out of that is to overpower his magic like I did to him—“ you took a deeper breath, dipping your head and growling softly in pain as Sans stood there, unflinching, only inches away and pinning his gaze to you, patient and sad. “I can’t move much any more. You can keep getting away for as long as you can, but… I don’t have powers any more, so…”

“no. no, no, don’t-“

“No, I don’t—“ embarrassment rose as quickly as your emotions spilled over. Frustration, anger, sorrow, you didn’t know what type of tears these were. “I don’t have my magic. There’s n-nothing I can do.”

“i'll take you with me. i'll teleport as far as i can, and…”

“It doesn’t matter. He’ll catch up eventually. It’s gonna be me that dies first. So I should…” you had to take another breath, and it was unsteady, “just get it over with, I’ll die and… you take my soul.”

He stared at you, eye to eye, neither of you moving. You knew he didn’t want to agree, but you knew too that there was no other option.

“It’ll be better than running around letting him enjoy it.”

“but. but. aw fuckin’… jeez.”

“My strength as a human, and your amazing magic, we lose all our downsides. Promise me you’ll use my soul.”

The ground was shaking now, flecks of shattered debris and dust scattering to either side. You barely registered what you’d asked him.

“i promise,” he said immediately.

“If we undo this… as... ‘one’ or however this works, we can go back. And we’ll get back to Papyrus and… everything.”

Sans’s fingers curled up to bunch in your shirt. He nodded. As you took carefully to your feet you watched him, and he seemed settled. Resigned. He looked a lot more like normal, actually.

There was no other way to do this. You shuffled, taking steps slowly and using the bone in your hand to lean on as you went. It hurt, but you thought what you knew was the grimmest thought of your life – hopefully it would be over soon. You wanted your powers back.

“You know, you’re not allowed to stop playing with me,” sang out that irritating voice.

Sans was gone now. You hoped he’d stay safe. Flowey was rounding on you now that he’d spotted you. His huge bulk had to be pulled slowly towards you by sinking his claws into the ground, breaking femurs everywhere he touched.

“I could level this place if I wanted, but you know why I don’t? I think it’s funny to let you have a bit of free reign. Yeah, you have your little chat. That’s fine! You’re still in MY world. You’re lucky I’m so nice.”

“Why didn’t we just hang out in the real world, Flowey? You didn’t even try to say hi to me.”

“With the level of friend-making ability you have, I’m not surprised you’d be this desperate. And this IS the real world, idiot. I wanted my control back. And now I’ve got it, and this was _supposed_ to be a place just for us, and instead, _he’s_ here—“ the many eyes dotted around Flowey’s front-facing side pulled a grimace of disgust, “but, actually, that’s okay, it just makes things even more amusing for me!”

“Then why—“ you were starting to stand there sheepishly, merely questioning this violent amalgamation, with your arms wrapping and holding yourself over your more worrying injuries, “why are you… just… attacking me. Why don’t we actually be friends?”

Flowey laughed, long, high and gloating. “Because _doing THIS is the fun part_!”

A viscerally unsettling writhing started as Flowey’s vines and tubes all moved and grew – that was a fist winding up for a punch. You closed your eyes, trying to hold yourself together, knowing those vines would reach for you any second and you could start fixing this once your soul left your body. _Wherever you’re waiting, Sans,_ you thought, _I know you’re seeing this. This time I guess I need you to **not** pop in and save my life_.

You flinched. A rumble and the sound of a whip, and you knew it had to be over. But nothing touched you.

Your eyes opened, and you saw Sans appear, disappear, teleporting himself out of reach of Flowey’s overgrowing vegetation. The vines were everywhere. Flowey laughed. On the other side of the plant monster you saw Sans squeeze his eyes shut, trying to do something with all his might, but nothing came, and he stumbled and lost his footing, and vines slammed him. He was thrown towards you, bones clattering against the floor, becoming a crumpled heap, crying out in a low, beaten groan.

You sobbed; it was too much, just too much. You cried where you stood. You wailed and tried to wipe the tears aside frantically, not wanting to lose sight of him. This despair that filled you was bigger than you could contain. For the first time in a very long time, you were filled with determination.

You wanted to get to Sans, but something was taking hold of you. You were buzzing, your hair all on end, like static had charged you and made you a conduit. The force of your will would not take any more. Gradually you felt a glow in your mind, a control you were regaining as easily as moving your own arm. You felt the timeline itself rolling along under your will. And you pushed.

The world slowed to a stop. You concentrated, and it was like it had been after Asgore had died, thick and slow and taxing. Part of you wanted to stop, to go to Sans and help him, but you forced yourself to remember everyone else. Papyrus, Undyne, Alphys, Toriel. The humans. Your parents. You needed them all. You clenched your teeth and forced the timeline to go back the way it had come.

It became agonising. This was a fight. Somehow, you were fighting for power, and only had a fraction of what had at one time been at your fingertips. But you held onto what power you’d clawed back to yourself, and you were not going to be pushed around. Things had changed around you. Your energy ran thin, and you released the timeline with a sudden gasp. You’d been holding your breath.

You opened your eyes, and saw Sans struck by a twisting mass of tendrils. He landed and rolled towards you, bones crunching, groaning in pain.

“Hahaha ha ha! Really! You really thought that was going to make a difference? This is almost _too_ much fun! Wanna try it again? I know _I_ won’t get tired of putting the trash out!”

You ran for the skeleton. Arms out, you fell to your knees beside him and scooped him up, hearing him huff in pain as you did.

It didn’t matter. Nothing you could do would make this any better. You were despairing enough that you knew you couldn’t fixate your determination again; the control left you with every moment you held Sans’s shivering body. You had given it your all, every bit of power you could muster, and all you could ever do would be to watch Sans take that blow.

“I’m sorry.”

He shifted, slowly tilting himself up towards you so you could see his smile. Worn, and strained, but as true as ever.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”

“my bro always said… gotta… gotta do your best. that's all you can do.”

“Don’t go. Don’t leave me here alone.”

“i think i'm gonna have to.”

You muffled your sobs with the shoulder of his sweatshirt. As you cried, you realised you were out in the open, just sitting there, but no doubt Flowey would leave you alone right now so he could watch. You knew he was. You weren’t going to look up.

“hey. hey, kid, c’mon. ‘s gonna be ok.”

Wary and cautious, you looked him in the face. He deserved it. He had a hairline crack in his skull forking from his forehead through his nose. Your hand fluttered over it, stroking him, cradling his head.

“It’s not… I can’t do this, I can’t-“

“hey. look at me.”

You didn’t need to be told, you could hardly tear your eyes _away_ from him, though you didn’t want him to see the mess you looked and felt right now. You sniffled.

“you can. you gotta believe me on this - cuz i always believed in you, not me. i knew you were gonna do something big. didn’t… know how you thought i could even help.”

“Saaans—“

“we’ll—we’ll laugh about this later,” he shifted his bulk against you and hitched a hand on his chest with a grimace as he moved. “i'm… tryin’ not to do anything that’ll embarrass the other sanses here, but uh… this… y’know…”

In spite of it all, seeing the way he was trying to cheer you up, you laughed slightly through your tears.

“you’re gonna do it, i know.”

“How? I just..”

“shhh, you’ll see. heh.”

“Wow, you really can’t stop being cryptic for one second, huh.”

“you… you were…” Sans lifted his hand, and you saw how much effort it took to do it. He blinked rapidly, something you hardly ever saw him do. He spoke haltingly, unsure of his words. “you were… really… _something_ …”

“Sans?”

His eyes were changing. They were going blurry. The tiny darting lights in his sockets were dim and out of focus.

“hey… papyrus…” he bunched up, and settled his head down on your arm. “where’d you park the car…”

You covered your mouth, trying to keep in the violent loss trying to tear its way up your throat, and grabbed out to your side for the bone you kept close at all times. You lifted Sans’s arm and pushed the bone onto his chest, letting his arms surround it, and felt him curl in the tiniest bit. Then you pushed yourself aside, watching him in trepidation and terror, clasping your hands to your face as Sans’s form ebbed asunder. It was at once disturbing yet a soothing process to watch. The atoms of his body simply ceased to hold together, and Sans crumbled, fell apart, into a peaceful pile of dust covering a single white bone.

Above those ashes, hovering unmoving in midair, was a heart. Bright, shining, a deep navy blue. It rose, gradually, freed of all constraints. When you looked at it, you knew, you _sensed_ Sans. It was the purest essence of who he was. It felt like his presence, like slow, lazy mornings, like relaxing in front of your favourite view, like how to see the best in others and be the proudest you could be of it, and part of the package, how to see the worst around you and the resilience to not let it overcome you.

It was Sans. And as fragile as this magic soul looked, it called for you. Somewhere, in another world, you’d read the history of Sans’s people on the walls and learned that once, a human died, and a monster absorbed their soul, gaining immense power. And the reverse had never been documented, since all monsters, unless they were a boss monster, had no determination or willpower or sheer strength to keep their souls stable after death.

Sans, you recalled, as clear as the first time you’d brought the vision to your eyes; the orange corridor, the chimes, the finality; was a boss monster.

You pulled yourself up. The pain felt like nothing any more. All that mattered was that incandescent blue heart. You got closer, staggering with your injuries, reaching out to it. You felt it call to you. An ache that all you wanted was to embrace.

You felt a curl around your ankle, and you pitched forwards as your body was yanked back and dragged.

“No! Get off!”

You didn’t look away. Your eyes stayed permanently on Sans’s soul. You wouldn’t look at anything else in the world. The vine squeezing you caught on your other heel as you kicked.

“Fuck! Fuck off!”

Managing to buck the tendril, you scrambled against the ground to throw yourself at the source of the blue light.

“Heeheehee, I _knew_ this would be fun!”

This time a thicker tendril smacked you to one side. With no momentum now, you flinched and held your pained waist, immediately shuffling back the way you’d been thrown.

“No, _get off_ , get away from me—“

“Isn’t this just the most dramatic situation you’ve ever been in your entire life, huh?”

The next vine to come for your legs missed as you erratically stepped out of the way. You were almost there. Several vines looped around your stomach, squeezing and pulling. You threw out your hand, only inches away. You begged the soul to come to you. Please. _Please_. Just a little closer. You stretched so hard you felt something was going to dislocate. That was still Sans. He could be with you, stay with you, help you finish this, and he wouldn’t really die. You wanted that reassurance, and you wanted his power, and above all else you just wanted _him_.

The shimmering soul, which had not left your sight since it appeared, shivered, splintered, and cracked, and shook itself into pieces. They fell onto the dust pile and the fragments lost their colour.

“NO!”

Flowey cackled, screeching like a possessed demon. His claws scraped at the ground, jaws grinding, all eyes squinting and blinking at odd intervals.

“Yeah, that’s better! Isn’t it? Just you and me! THAT’S HOW IT S H O U L D B E.”

You didn’t know how to describe what you felt, looking at the small, uneven mound of ashes. But it wasn’t loss. It was beyond that. You couldn’t accept it. You weren’t going to _allow_ this to happen.

Flowey was too distracted, flapping around, twisting his vines and wires, to notice you approach him. You walked right up to the edge of his sideways jaw, and he stopped guffawing, looking you eye-to-eye just before you leaned back and threw a punch at the monstrosity’s chin.

Flowey’s entire weight was thrown, and he landed awkwardly on part of his face.

“What!”

“Listen to me you fucking asshole. The entire world isn’t about you.”

“Yeah it is!”

Another punch, just as Flowey’s awkward, thorny arms had been righting himself. He span away from you this time, knocked into a quarter turn.

“Shut the fuck up. You’re part of the world that made you, and so is everybody else. You have no right to deny existence to them, you piece of shit.”

“But-“

This time you winced, pulling up your leg, smashing your heel into the nearest part of the plant mass. Again, he reeled.

“How are you doing that??”

“I’m human, you moron. I’m stronger than every monster in the Underground put together.”

“So? I have _six_ human souls!”

“Yeah, but they don’t want to do _this_.”

This time he tried to get in your way, throwing vines, but with a hefty smack they recoiled, and you caught the last one and twisted it around itself, watching Flowey’s expression of shock as he registered the pain.

Your own strength was unfathomable. Something was coursing through your veins, pumped by your heart, in your very blood. Magic. And there was no limit to it, because there was nothing you wouldn’t do. You attacked Flowey, tearing at him with no restraint. He retaliated, but could not right himself to face you, and couldn’t strike any blow you felt. He was hurt, slightly weakened. And the first ebbs of true control returned to you.

A more desperate Flowey smashed one of his appendages into the floor, and the indeterminate ground below you suddenly cracked open, making you lose your footing. Vines grasped at you, seizing your legs, forcing you to sink into the churning opening below you.

And all you thought was _nope, not happening_.

The passage of time fell under your thrall, and with smooth ease this time, you span in reverse. You could only hold it for a moment as control broke from your mind. A magic tug of war wrestled from you. But with a gasp, you were back on your feet, and Flowey again planted his fist into the floor, spilling up tendrils, and you had already thrown yourself out of the way, running up close to him.

You climbed Flowey’s body. The fleshy plant mass was lumpy and leafy and easy to scramble into, and he shook himself, confirming to you when nothing else happened that he wouldn’t risk firing his attacks at his own body. Scaling him, grabbing footholds on his thorns, you grabbed at the mass of wires, tubes and stalks that composed his suspended bulk and pulled them, one by one, until they split apart.

You marvelled, at the back of your mind, at the level of power in your very body. Magically amplified, the more you smashed into the horrendous fusion of plant and technology the more you were invigorated by power and the insistence of your own willpower to bring this to an end. As Flowey weakened you were, in turn, realising more and more control over the continuum, preventing him from resetting like you could. And when you stood back in front of him, kicking and hitting until he crumpled, Flowey’s form could no longer contain the souls of those who did not want to serve him. The pulsing, multi-coloured souls, green and purple and yellow by turn, forced their way out of the tubing that contained them and rose, escaping Flowey, and they disappeared.

You dropped to your knees. With slight fatigue, you knew you’d saved them, and you hoped with everything you had that would be enough. The world beneath you shook, and you just panted for air as your body caught up with itself. Flowey was yelling, jarring voice getting more pronounced in its dissonance. It got quieter, and the ground shuddered back to normal.

When, after taking time to breathe, you looked up, all you saw was a single flower.

It was over.

The world felt quiet and empty. Silence, no echoes or wind, and you were now the biggest single thing that existed. That flower was crippled at the stem, barely standing. You were going to pull it out with your bare hands. You were shaking, still. You were overexerted. Hoarse. Tense. Tattered. But you had enough left in you for this.

You limped to the flower, and the flower spoke with its face resolutely down, mumbling to the ground.

“Well. Do it.”

Your expression was already set. You could think of nothing else but wiping out this miserable, psychopathic mockery of a living thing. You stared at it though, for a moment.

“Get on with it.”

The last remaining pieces of the world you were from – the pile of dust and your old bone. You approached the little memorial, where Sans’s remains stayed mostly undisturbed, still gathered around the notched femur. You reached for your weapon.

And stopped.

“What are you waiting for? Finish this.”

Papyrus’s bone, which you had once taken to defend yourself, gleamed back at you, worn from its adventures along your underground journey, and you remembered the last words the skeleton had said to you.

_“Promise me you won’t hurt anyone else.”_

You thought back on those you’d hurt. The fights. The anxieties. The death of Asgore.

When you returned to Flowey, he spat in impatience.

“What are you _doing_. Get this _over with_.”

You shrugged.

“This is the only way! Kill me already!”

“No, it’s not.”

“If you don’t kill me,” Flowey tilted his face up, just enough to glimpse his eyes. “I’ll come back. I’ll do it again.”

“It’s not for you. It’s for someone I knew once.”

“Look where you are,” he gestured around with his leaves, seething with impatience. “Do you _really_ think chivalry matters here?”

“’S not up to me. Just… go.”

“Why?”

“Go.”

The flower looked around itself.

“You’re never going to understand,” it muttered, and disappeared back into where it had sprouted.

You retraced your steps, back to where Sans had been. For a few moments, you stared, trying not to cry. The last thing you saw of this world was a little pile of grey dust, undisturbed, around a pearly, weathered bone.

The world came to a stop.

And time reversed.

* * *

 

In front of you was a door. Tall, wide, surrounded by the royal sigil. The doorway to Asgore’s castle.

You breathed, and stumbled back a few paces. The shock to your body was not easy to take. A disconnect between the last thing you remembered and the physical state of your form. Your wounds did not exist, you were not exhausted and sweating and dirty. You weren’t scraped or slashed, with overexerted joints and a ragged throat. You felt your heart rate increase, but slow back down as your mind caught up.

But you were still crying.

You were back, but the pain was still so close. Stumbling away from the door, you made it only a few steps before your vision blurred completely, and you heard your voice echo down the empty hall.

“SANS!”


	13. Reload

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa hey sorry for the wait there. Again. Whoops.

You were on your knees. Sobbing, uncontrollably, not even able to look up as the sound of someone approaching grew nearer. You had to panic. What you had just been through played out unceasingly in your head. Asgore, dying. The universe being destroyed. Sans dying, and there was nothing you could do about it—

Someone was kneeling with you. Someone was trying to get their arms around you. You let it happen, your fingers digging into the material of Sans’s soft, warm, tangible hoodie. It was him. It was really him. You kept crying.

“holy shit…”

His voice, his deep but near breathless voice. You sobbed harder. Nothing could make you coherent or stem your emotions, and all you could do was wait, trapped in the current, for the surge to wane. Relief was so hard to take on this scale. You clung to Sans and he let you wail into his clothes. It was so hard to forget. The horrible finality of everything you’d said to each other in Flowey’s world. The awful decisions you’d tried to make. Despite being with Sans now, even though he’d returned as soon as you’d called for him - you could not move the image of his death, his pitiful little patch of grey dust, from your mind.

“Sans…” you realised you had been saying his name, over and over. “Sans, please, oh god…”

Your eyes were flooded; you could not have seen him even if you’d looked up. But you felt the way his smaller body leaned into you, embracing you and bidding you comfort, and that was enough.

“kid,” he muttered, and you felt in your soul – you were now so in tune you could sense the magical flow of your soul’s reactions – joy erupted in you every time he spoke. There was a pause, as no reassuring words came easily to him, and then: “you’re ok. you’re ok, i promise. kid. shhh. i swear it’s ok.”

The passion of your distress had a mind of its own. A total mess of grief, hope, longing and relief, you had used the strength of your emotions to free yourself from hell, and now the same sheer force could not be contained and that was why you cried. You felt Sans sigh.

“we don’t have to stay here. you wanna go somewhere safe?”

It was still beyond you to form a reply, a sentence, anything beyond fragments of his name. Part of your mind worked rationally and wanted badly to stop being so embarrassing and explain to him, with a grace that met the severity of the situation, all that had just happened. But that part of you was well and truly overwhelmed. Your nose was running onto his shirt. You nodded, gasping, “Please…”

You tingled with that familiar sense of displacement, but it also made you want to die with gratitude that you were able to feel it.

You didn’t know where you were. It seemed very dark. Sans helped you to sit, with your legs over the edge of something, and then you sobbed on him, nuzzling his shoulder with your arms around his neck. He waited. He stroked your arm and told you, every few minutes, that you were all right.

Present tense.

It was some time before your level of shock began to weaken. Your violent crying reduced to heavy breathing with your tears still wetting the monster’s shoulder, and finally you were able to look around.

“let’s talk. as soon as you can.”

You nodded. You needed to, you wanted to. Glancing around, you finally saw how dim and quiet and still this place was.

“Wh-where a-are… are… are w…”

“this is just a cave,” said Sans. “sort of near waterfall. but it doesn’t connect to anything.”

There was water. You heard it dripping, almost musically. And there was a pool. It stretched out from where you sat, further and further, visible by its surface layer of luminescent algae. In the soft light you already felt calmer, as anything sensory had been reduced, letting you breathe.

“this cave doesn’t join into waterfall. or anywhere. it's its own pocket,” Sans continued. “there’s physically no way in. so i swear, nothing can possibly hurt you here. ok? just, uh… just stay calm.”

This information washed over you like a balm. It had been so hard to forget Flowey’s all-encompassing terror, the entrapment, no escape from whatever he wanted to do to you. You weren’t just hidden, you were untraceable, and nobody would find you. This didn’t scare you in the slightest, you wanted it. You yearned to be utterly and totally concealed. For the first time since rewinding time you began to feel safer – gradually, as you breathed deeper and your heart rate slowed down.

You felt Sans’s hand on yours. He was reaching up to gently move yours away from your face. You let him. He could see you, and you started to manage to see him too, as you blinked tears away and the urge to see the skeleton swelled. He became less blurry. It really was him. Despite having watched him die, seen him – murdered - here he was. Tiny pupils like actual stars in the darkness, fixed on you. His brow heavy, set in extreme and obvious worry. He was real, he lived, he moved. Another layer of persistent terror began to lose its grip.

By-and-by you lay on his shoulder, hiccoughing, but having regained some control over yourself. Sans had started slowly threading his fingers through your hair. The careful touch was a constant reminder that you both lived, and you were not alone.

“Do you think,” you tested your voice and it was hoarse and rough, “could we… go somewhere else…”

“’course.”

“Your place.”

Sans blinked at you before scurrying his hands around your middle to get a good grip, and everything dissolved. Then it was impossible to see at all. Sans had to gently pull himself away and you heard his slippered footfalls on the carpet, and his lamp clicked on. Dim, still, but here you were.

In the middle of Sans’s bedroom.

He came straight back as you crumpled up on his floor. It was comforting in being the closest thing to home you could have thought of down here. Although messy, with wrappers and a small pile of discarded clothes, it was where you wanted to be.

“hey.”

Sans wanted you to look at him, and there was nothing else you wanted more than that. Just to look at him.

“we’re going to talk about what happened, ok? take it easy. just talk to me.” His skeletal hand braced your shoulder. “asgore hurt you? uh, he… killed you?”

You reached out and held his face with your palms. Sans’s rough, rounded face. You gently rubbed the pad of your thumb across his cheek, and although you’d known this since you rewound time, you actually now realised it properly.

“no,” Sans said, brow furrowing. He stared back and looked harder. His pupils darted across your face, reading fast, shaking his head. “no, what… _what_?”

It finally pierced your mind that Sans did not know what had happened. This was not the same Sans who had fought Flowey beside you. He didn’t know. This was what the Sans in Flowey’s world had called an ‘other Sans’, now that you had gone back and branched the timeline differently. This wasn’t the same person you had faced the end of existence with. Not the Sans you had made a pact with to take your soul. He was trying to understand, because those memories truly were lost when that Sans had perished. This Sans had left you in the final corridor and then near immediately returned to find you inconsolable.

“what happened??” Sans was asking more insistently, although his voice stayed low. “i don’t understand-“

You felt like the breath was knocked out of you, shocking your body still. You forced yourself to look, really look, at him. His deep eye sockets looked cavernous in the faint light, the shadows in the tiny room casting every edge of his face in shadow.

“You died. Sans. I w... I watched you die,” your voice quavered, threatening to give up, but saying those words and making them real also gave you strength.

The skeleton looked as solemn as you could imagine him, eye sockets wide. He took your hands from his face and curled his fingers around yours. “i’m right here. i'm here, go on.”

“You… there was nothing I could do… I fought… Asgore,” you had to tell him, you had to get this out, you couldn’t be the sole possessor of this knowledge. “He couldn’t be reasoned with. U-until… I injured him, and Flowey – it’s Flowey! It’s a talking flower and he used to have control over our timeline, but now he doesn’t ‘cause of me…” the disconnect was growing. Knowing you were the only person to have experienced it, it seemed too much to expect this to make sense. Weren’t you babbling nonsense? But Sans looked deathly serious, keeping his eyes on you and nodding for you to continue. “The flower waited for me to hurt Asgore and then killed him and used all the six souls and… became a god, I think.”

“yeah,” Sans sighed. “i know the guy. well, know _of_. so that’s what he wanted, huh. what'd he do with ‘em?”

“He…” you had to swallow, your throat was going dry. “Uh, erased the world.”

You watched Sans’s expression sag, shaking his head, and taking his hands back to rub his face.

“oh.”

“But I was still there, because I have determination, and…” you hesitated. “…So do you.”

You almost expected Sans to take issue with your knowledge of this, for some reason, but he simply chuckled and again nodded for you to remain uninterrupted. You explained to him, at a varying pace, how Flowey mutated himself and hadn’t expected Sans to join you. How Flowey had taken Sans’s most powerful attack and rewound time to negate it. How the two of you had tried to formulate a plan but Sans had been killed. You left out the details of your fatalistic scheme. You didn’t mention the intensity of the moment you shared with him, crouched behind a barrier of bones in the void, with his hand pressed to your neck searching for a pulse. You avoided the very idea of you trying to absorb his soul. Sans remained perfectly still as he let you run through the whole situation over again. Although it felt raw and unnerving, you knew Sans was here, and explaining it all calmed you and stopped your mind from racing.

“ok. so, yeah. i died.”

“You died.”

“’m sorry y’ had t’ see that.”

You leaned over and squeezed his arm.

“what’d i say when i went, anything cool?”

That forced a thick snort out of you and you covered your mouth in surprise.

“Sans!”

“i really wanna know.”

“You um…” you were smiling, although it didn’t feel like you should be. “You said you didn’t want to embarrass yourself. And then you… mentioned Papyrus.”

At that, the skeleton’s face crinkled so you knew his smile had buckled with a genuine pang.

“Flowey just wanted to torture us. He kept saying nasty things to you about um… Papyrus stuff. Because he was gone. But I don’t think… well, you said it didn’t get to you.”

“eh. i’ll level with you. i’m kinda good at pretending i don’t care.”

“Hmm. Still, I don’t think you gave him the satisfaction.”

“nice.”

You finally felt as though your soul was mending itself, accepting the world you were in as real. Recovering from the trauma enough to recognise that things could be better. And thanks to Sans you kept the smile on. But the more things you had neglected to retell to him the more he felt disconnected from the Sans you had watched die, and because of that, a part of you still mourned him. 

You rubbed at your bloodshot eyes.

“Sorry for-“

“no. nuh-uh. it’s fine.”

“….Okay.”

“none of this was your fault.”

You dropped your hands and stared at him. His eyes were averted, which convinced you he was sincere.

“i’m sorry for thinking it was. i knew about the flower and i. well, you showed up and when i found out you had time-bending magic…”

“You have a hard time trusting humans, for… obvious reasons. It’s okay. I didn’t really… I didn’t tell you.”

“but still. i’m sorry.” He had stopped touching you, instead seemed to be curling in on himself. “your worst sin was making a shitty joke and i blamed you for the timeline stopping and starting and, uh… it’s pretty obvious you never did that until now. ‘n i can’t blame ya for what ya just did.”

Eventually you found the words you wanted. “You’ve had a lot to deal with.”

“yeah-“ Sans said, but it sounded like a trapped sob, a release of something he’d been wanting to share for longer than you’d known him. But he swallowed it, trying not to lose his cool in front of you.

“I get it. I don’t know what this _thing_ is but I’m the only thing stopping it from moving time around at will, and that’s... terrifying,” Sans stared at you, eye dots widened, “I never want it to have that power again, even if that means I have to put up with it, that’s still better. I saw the world end—“ you looked down, and the rest of your sentence escaped you. “I saw the world end.”

“you lived through it.”

He was trying to help. You wanted to hug him. But the memories came back to you so easily.

“I need to apologise too.”

“for what?”

“Don’t tell me it wasn’t my fault or whatever. I just need to…” tears threatened to compromise you again as Sans nodded he understood. “I’m sorry I let you die. I mean, I feel like I can’t complain, because we got to say goodbye and you deserved that with Papyrus instead, he’d just stopped existing and there was nothing left except…” you looked down, across the carpet where Papyrus’s sturdy bone lay. “It should’ve been him with you, not me. I gave you his bone so that… when you dusted…”

It hadn’t been as eloquent as you wanted, but Sans made a strange noise. And when you sheepishly looked at him, he was trying to claw the edges of his eye sockets dry with his fingers and back of his hand. Giving up on that, he crawled closer. His arms in their thick, soft fleece wrapped around your shoulders.

“you did really good, kid.”

You returned his embrace and held his weight on you, letting him listen to your heartbeat, thinking that if you could stop the flow of time entirely, it would feel no different from the dim-lit solace between you and Sans in that one, safe moment. He was heavy, and solid, and very much alive. You thought back to the moment you’d seen his soul. Fragile and beautiful. The open, uncontrolled and unfiltered display of his inner self. It was right here in your arms. Barely less fragile, and no less beautiful.

Neither of you were inclined to leave your embrace by yourselves, until, after some time, you heard movement from the rest of the house and a door closing. Sans lifted his head. Papyrus was home. His raised voice bounded upstairs to you, along with some frantic yapping.

“i'm gonna…” Sans began to shuffle awkwardly back upright. “see, uhh… lemme talk to him, just for a sec. you know how humans get him excited.”

All you needed was to give him a fond nod. But he hesitated, looking back at you as he opened his door, to make sure you affirmed his leaving you. Then he was gone.

You had wanted to tell him about his soul.

There was no reason to. You weren’t intending to embarrass him. It was something that required privacy for monsters, you’d gathered something along those lines, but still, you wanted to talk to him about it. It hadn’t felt right to do so, not in that blissful eon of contact you’d had with him scooped into your arms. It was improper, and it was morbid, but part of you wanted to tell him more about what happened after his death because the fact that he knew about it would somehow invalidate the idea altogether. If you were aware of what happened after you’d died, you couldn’t be dead.

That was silly, you told yourself. That was entirely for your benefit, don’t weird him out over it. Not after the closeness you’d just had. There was a lot to get used to about this Sans, the other Sans, and how to juggle what you remembered and he didn’t.

Downstairs, you heard raised voices and Sans’s heavy baritone calling out. What you had to do now didn’t seem as daunting as it might have to the old you. The old you was naïve enough to walk up to Asgore and expect him to understand you. The old you had struggled to stay on the right track, been beaten up by multiple monsters, offended Papyrus who had only ever tried to help you; the old you had struggled against the tide and been taunted by a mutant flower for dying unmourned.

There was a lot to get used to for Sans, as well, between this you and the other you.

You came out and descended the stairs, a little too lost in thought to attempt to give off any particular impression. But Papyrus gasped, violently, and pointed at you in disbelief.

“YOU--!” he hopped in place. “HUMAN, YOU…”

It made you smile. He was still the same old Papyrus, in spite of everything, and you hoped he always would be.

“yeah, it’s her, bro.”

“HUMAN, YOU LOOK… DIFFERENT FROM WHEN I LAST SAW YOU.”

“Different, huh? In a good way?” You had flinched a little, because it was probably startlingly obvious that you had been crying a lot.

Papyrus frowned a little and did not reply. He came closer. You could see he was concerned, as he always wore his emotions on his sleeve, which was quite impressive for a skeleton without eyes.

“WOULD YOU LIKE A HUG?”

You almost laughed him off. You caught yourself, remembering that if anyone could be talked to without pretence, it was Papyrus. So you nodded and let yourself be swept up in his long arms, picked up and snuggled voraciously. Warm emotions threatened to engulf you yet again.

“That’s nice, Papyrus… thanks.”

“DON’T MENTION IT! IT SEEMED NECESSARY.” Then, remembering something, he turned to Sans. “DOES THIS MEAN YOU ARE…”

“yeah, we’re good. don’t worry about it.”

“OH, THANK GOD,” he finally remembered to put you down and look at you appreciatively. “I DID WHAT I HAD TO, BUT I DIDN’T LIKE IT. NOT AFTER YOU HAD SO SUCCESSFULLY BECOME OUR FRIEND! SO NOW WE CAN BE FRIENDS ALL OVER AGAIN?”

“Papyrus,” you started, “I think there’s something that Sans and I need to do. It’s sort of important. And it might be weird. We should probably talk about…”

Sans waved a hand at you. “anythin’ we gotta talk about you can say to papyrus too. he’s cool.”

“I _AM_ COOL! SHOULD I BE WORRIED?”

“Uhhh…”

“she’s been through some stuff. not great stuff.”

Papyrus raised his gloves in front of his face. “OH. OH NO. MY FRIEND, I’M SORRY TO HEAR IT, BUT TAKE SOLACE IN THE FACT YOU ARE HERE WITH PAPYRUS, THE GREAT FRIEND EXTRAORDINAIRE, AND HIS BROTHER, WHO DOES OKAY SOMETIMES WHEN HE ISN’T BEING MONUMENTALLY STUBBORN ABOUT IT. AND TOGETHER WE WILL LISTEN TO YOU AND DISCUSS THE BEST WAY TO HANDLE THINGS.”

“You are so… good, Papyrus.”

“damn straight.”

“I don’t know, it’s kind of… complicated…”

“IS IT ABOUT PEOPLE JUMPING AROUND REALITY AND ALTERING TIME?” the taller skeleton put his hands on his hips, and looked to Sans as if accusing him. “THIS ALWAYS SEEMS TO HAPPEN WITH YOU.”

So, you and Papyrus and Sans went to sit at their dining table, just as you had what felt like a lifetime ago. They brought you a glass of water, which you chugged with gratitude, and then they got you another. Their little white dog came to sit on your feet and for once was completely quiet. You retold the events in a fuller form, starting from all the way back at Mettaton’s performance.

“IT WAS DELIGHTFUL,” Papyrus wheezed with stars in his eyes. “I KNOW METTATON IS RENOWNED FOR HIS PLOT TWISTS, BUT EVEN _I_ WAS SHOCKED TO SEE SANS UP THERE, USING MAGIC.”

“hey, me too, kinda.”

“AND, WELL…” he blushed, very obviously. “THAT YOU HAD SOMETHING OF MINE WITH YOU TOO. I WAS VERY FLATTERED.”

“he ran around to undyne’s after and yelled about how one of his bones had been on tv.”

“NO I DIDN’T! AND IF I DID, THERE WERE CROWDS LINING THE STREETS EAGER TO GET A LOOK AT _MORE_ BONES LIKE THE ONES THEY HAD SEEN TELEVISUALISED.”

You went on to explain your goal of trying to talk to Asgore about the barrier, and you were careful with your words. It didn’t seem like Papyrus would have expected the King to give you no quarter and try to kill you, and true enough, he listened and said nothing and seemed subdued. You couldn’t really soften it for him, but you did cut your explanation short there.

“He didn’t want to listen to me. I know all he wants is to free everyone, I wish you could be. I want to get out just as much. I just… he wouldn’t listen. But the most important thing is that I can’t defeat Asgore, or… something really bad happens.”

Everyone was quiet for a moment until Sans said, “i shouldn’t’ve let you go in there alone.”

Papyrus looked at him with his brow raised.

“NEVER FEAR, LITTLE HUMAN,” he said, injecting confidence into a room in drought. “WE SHALL COME UP WITH A PLAN.”

“Can we? I’ve thought about this so much, and just haven’t…”

“OF COURSE WE WILL! WHAT KIND OF QUESTION IS THAT. WE HAVE TO, SO WE MUST. WE WILL! I, FOR ONE, AM VERY MUCH IN FAVOUR OF ASGORE NOT DYING, SO THAT’S A START. WHAT ELSE DO WE KNOW?”

You shook your head. You knew far less than what you’d been working with in the past. “I used to be able to use magic to see possible… futures. Alternate futures. When I reached Asgore I stopped seeing anything. Because… there was no future. For anybody. Everything ended.”

You looked over to Sans, who was staring at the table and thinking. And you looked to Papyrus, apprehensive about how he would handle what you’d said, but true to his brother’s word he nodded pensively and scratched his chin.

“ASGORE IS OVER-ENTHUSIASTIC, THEN. THAT’S A SHAME. WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT WAS SO HARD TO HAVE TWO PEOPLE INTERACT WITHOUT THEM DYING? I’VE NEVER HAD ANY TROUBLE WITH IT.”

“we aren’t all you, papyrus.”

“UNFORTUNATE, BUT TRUE.”

“i can do what i should’ve done before,” said Sans, still staring downward. “go with you. like you’ve asked me this entire time. guess you knew what you were talking about with that perception thing.”

“I felt like you didn’t want me to be right about it.” He sagged. You weren’t accusing him, you were just correct. And it wasn’t a surprising response. “Who _does_ want to think the future is predictable. I know I’d rather be wrong.”

You saw Sans widen his smile a little.

“WELL, I CAN PROMISE TO GO WITH YOU TOO! YOU WON’T BE ALONE, NOT ANY MORE, FOR EVEN A MOMENT. YOUR TWO SKELETAL DEFENDERS WILL MAKE SURE NOTHING HAPPENS TO YOU.”

For a moment the image of Sans’s dust floated before your eyes, tiny and lost in a void of absolutely nothing. A void that reached for you from the back of your mind. And before that, running and searching and fighting off monsters and all the trials you’d been put through during which you’d wanted nothing more, nothing in the entire world more, than the brothers to be on your side. You were crying again. Sans moved toward you, but you had already stepped up and gone to throw yourself on Papyrus, clinging around his broad, armoured shoulders.

“ _Thank you_.”

“HUMAN! IT’S ALL RIGHT. PLEASE DON’T WORRY.”

“Don’t you think,” you snuffled, rubbing your face into his scarf, “it’s funny, how you were dedicated to capturing a human for the King, and now you’re pledging to defend one from him.”

Rather than amusement, Papyrus’s voice took on a lofty tone. “IF A PERSON NEEDS PROTECTING THEN THEY SHOULD BE PROTECTED. ANY MONSTER UNDERSTANDS THAT.” He was in no hurry to let you go.

“Strange, how… skeletons can be so comfortable.”

You could hear Sans shuffling around. “whatever we’re gonna do, we should do somethin’, i guess.”

“If I had my way I’d live here forever with you guys and stay lost,” you pulled yourself out of Papyrus’s embrace at last. “But.”

“SO, WE’RE OFF TO VISIT THE CASTLE?”

“Wait… before Asgore… uh… he won’t listen to me on my own, and I might be safer with you, but he probably still won’t try to understand me. We need something else. There was something I said to him that actually worked, but I found out too late.”

“what’s that?”

You tugged Papyrus’s hand in yours and motioned for Sans. “C’mon.”

The three of you lurched through the front door and immediately you stopped. The cold air greeted you and you had missed it. The chill of Snowdin, the fairy lights around you, the soft lamplight glinting on the heaps of snow, the crystallised, blanketed quiet with a murmur of warm conversation and merriment from the bar down the road.

It was all so different for you, you’d changed, but Snowdin hadn’t and here you were, again. Almost as if you’d rewound your timeline to fix your mistakes from the beginning.

But you hadn’t. Your mistakes had followed you this far. You set off on the path out of town, towards the cliffs and the forest that ended in the Ruins. You crunched forward, hearing a duo of footsteps in your wake, and crossed the bridge that you had chased Sans to, where he’d chewed you out and your lonely journey had begun. You didn’t look back. Nobody spoke.

When you reached the other side Sans hurried up to meet your side and took your wrist in his mittened hand. You stopped to look at him. Once more, he was inscrutable, smiling faintly and looking at you with gleaming, beady eyes. Then you felt your other arm linked around Papyrus’s as he too came up beside you. Arm in arm, you made your way slowly to the forest path, all three footsteps trudging through the snow as one.

Only once you reached the stone wall did all of you let go, dropping each other to raise your hands in confusion or surprise or warning. You were at the door to the Ruins, and it was open.


End file.
